Perfect
So, I was thinking about a friend of mine who describes himself as a perfectionist. I thought about his view of things and came to the realization that perfectionism requires an extraordinary amount of faith. Faith in what? That’s what I can’t tell.
It makes me think of Joseph Campbell saying “Funny thing about faith…I don’t need faith, I have experience.” Another thing Joseph Campbell said is “God is terrible! I mean, the end of the world!” He was talking to Bill Moyer about Revelations and the emphasis people place on the positive attributes of God; love, compassion, all that. God…that’s a lot right there.
How could I be more perfect than God? I don’t even think about it.
Comments
Site Feed
Log-in
March 9th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
I don’t know where perfectionism comes from, I guess it could come from many places and manifest itself for more than a few reasons.
Mine came/comes from fear, though, not faith. I still fight the voice.
Creating unrealistic expectations of myself, and knowing I could never meet them — that quote about fearing not that we are powerless, but all-powerful? — allowed me to live in a no-woman’s-land of not taking responsibility for myself, for my humanity, for the beauty of my imperfection.
So, for example, as a writer, here is how the voice goes: “you should write. you suck because you’re not writing. but why write? it’s all been done before and you’ll never be as good as x. so why try? you suck. you won’t try and you won’t fail.”
quite a loop. glad to be out of it. even if the voice speaks i am able to silence it.