Being Perfect is Super Boring
On letting go of the need to always get it right.
*THE ORIGINAL VERSION of this story appeared in Modern Women.
These days I’ve been cleaning apartments to make extra money. It pays almost as well as the babysitting gigs I’ve had for the past six months. Ten euros above minimum wage, eight times less than my income as a psychotherapist. Since I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go back to that work, I’ll take it.
Because what I won’t take: being a slave to the machine working my ass off for pennies with no time left for myself or making bank working for someone or something I care nothing about.
Elizabeth Gilbert gave an insightful 10 minute talk on the difference between a career, a job and a passion. She says the best thing you can do for your passion is not kill it by getting a career you hate — a career being something we often need to study and train for, invest in, climb ladders and do a fair share of bullshitting especially when that career is something we care nothing about. Her advice: Go get a job!
A job is a compromise. You may not be in a passionate love affair with your job but you probably don’t hate yourself for engaging in something that turns into an act of ongoing self-betrayal. Because there’s less investment and pressure, you have more time and energy to do what you love.
When you need to find a job, it makes you think outside the box. I’m taking on jobs I never thought I’d do. When my father heard I was cleaning apartments, a hardy laughter belted out of him.
Growing up, I had a messy room. Cleaning never gave me that purging satisfaction it does for some. Twenty five years later, it oddly does. Though no longer interested in the business of helping others sort out their emotional baggage, I still like to lend a hand. Dust, dirt and grime — it doesn’t talk or need to work things out. I can be in my own world, helping to clear out the remains of something less heavy.
Recently, my jobs have been packing me a few uncomfortable punches becoming I can say with absolute certainty, my greatest teacher. Going from psychologist to housekeeper teaches me about humility. That was the first and easier lesson to master.
I thought I had dropped most of my perfectionism years ago. Instead, I’m finding layers of it hiding deep, a vampire sucking my soul dry, revealing not only the pressure I put on myself to be on point all the time but also parts of me I’d rather not see.
At age 45, I’m a writer, artist, housekeeper and babysitter.
Discovering as of late, a bullshitter too.
My foray into housekeeping began last winter. A friend, taking a month off for the holidays, needed someone to sub for him. Since I need the dough, I take the job.
I show up eagerly one evening at a client’s place and before starting my night’s work confirm the fee, one we both seem to agree on. At my shift’s end, I’m handed less. A miscommunication on one or both ends had obviously occurred. But that wasn’t the problem.
Sometimes my mind like an octopus, has its tentacles in many places, entertaining several realities, dreaming of many worlds, computing handfuls of possibilities all at once. This makes for good art and an interesting life but it also makes me spacey. It was possible I misheard her so I try to make room for a conversation but within a few seconds get shut down. Not nastily, passive-aggressively, as I get pushed ever so sweetly out the door.
As I make my way to the subway, I’m more confused than ever. When uncomfortable things aren’t given the chance to air, confusion breeds. I bring it up with my friend to get clarity and he addresses it. She pays me the discrepancy.
Two weeks later, I’m cleaning an office. Turns out that client is also the owner of this business. I see her walk through the glass door, lit by the cold Berlin sun and instantly flash her my sweetest smile. Then I hear this bunch of bullshit coming out of my mouth:
“It’s nice to see you.”
I wasn’t unhappy to see her. I was though (I realized after the fact) feeling uncomfortable, vulnerable to something in the air, imagined or real. Even though I got paid, I had no way of gaging the temperature between us since I wasn’t the one to settle “the dispute”. Was the misunderstanding truly cleared? Or was money the remedy to patch things over? Could it be that I was making a big deal out nothing?
My existence precariously hanging, was in search of a ground, asking her with my fake smile and white lie: “Where do I stand in your eyes?”
God damnit!
The good ole people pleaser is making her way onto the scene, dismantling in a flash the perception of myself as a person who speaks her truth and has the confidence to withstand not being liked; her presence reminding me of all the many ways we humans run from our discomfort.
My desire to be loved no matter what has hijacked the scene with a bunch of bullshit smoothing out any potential threats to that.
I’m disappointed with myself.
Complex emotions
At the same time, I’m aware that I’m also not someone who particularly runs from conflict. I actually enjoy it. Sometimes it’s when I feel the most alive — in a clash, heart racing, temperature rising, word flying frenzy charging my body towards a grand release reminding me I am here and how good it is to be alive.
I get that feeling when the conflict is leading somewhere.
When I’m in a fair fight, where the desire to see the other and be seen is the ultimate intention. Where conflict, low grade or rip roaring, ends in expansion rather than constriction.
A most beautiful kind of love
The desire for control or hunger for power are not absent in this picture. In fact, I’ve come to believe the action of love is often experienced through conflict and in particular, what we might imagine to be its opposite.
Love can manifest paradoxically in the decision to not be controlling, condescending, judgmental, dismissive and so on as we are smack in the experience of being every one of those things.
Love is how we work that out — allowing all our parts to emerge and through living them out (without judgement), learn with intention to check those which don’t serve.
Love spilling through not just the good, but the bad and the ugly.
So back at the office with a stupid smile on my face, ashamed of my inner people pleaser, I’m also ready for a good fight. The woman warrior who doesn’t like to be disrespected or dismissed, who doesn’t hold back on calling people out on their bullshit is also present.
But something better than a good fight happens that afternoon. A lightbulb goes off. I begin to understand not so much the things I do and the ways I abandon myself in order to feel loved. Fifteen plus years of therapy showed me that.
I realize that sometimes I’m a bullshitter and that’s actually quite alright.
In other words, I don’t have to always get it “right”. Imperfection is not just a part of life, it is life. We are perfect as we are, in our imperfect state with acceptance of this duality leading to something we can begin to call wholeness.
I’m not advocating bullshitting as a way of life. I’m definitely not advocating using this piece as an excuse to get out of any kind of behavior that’s harmful to yourself or others.
All I am saying is that it’s okay to be many things at once.
To be a badass and then a people pleaser in the turn of a breath.
That it’s never a good policy to expect ourselves to be one way all the time.
To be alive means we are vulnerable — vulnerable to disappointment, to rejection, to loss, to death. That means we’re going to feel all kinds of uncomfortable things on the regular and react in all kinds of human ways.
When I expect myself to be only one way: a giving, loving, compassionate person for example and when I’m not and judge myself harshly for that, I leave no room for my humanity. I become an exhausted shell of a person under the illusion that perfection is attainable, becoming more imperfect and miserable than ever.
It’s also when I feel terribly bored. Bored of myself, bored of life.
Colorless.
Tasteless.
Empty.
Dead.
Completely out of love.
Being perfect is the most boring thing in the world to be.
To be fully alive, we must let all of our parts in.
