Insidious Perfectionism
July 23rd, 2003
hard!
chance to write an entry, I hate that everything I have written isn’t witty and
wise and filled with insight that makes you sigh “yes, it is good to be alive.”
In fact, I hate that I am mostly patient and empathetic with my children but
sometimes I’m just irritable and mean, I hate that my house is usually mostly
clean but that there are spots under furniture that never seem to get clean,
where dust foxes chase the dust bunnies, windows with fingerprints, and that,
frankly, when you share a bathroom with four and six year old boys it’s just
nice to keep a container of those disposable antibacterial wipes on the back of
the toilet. I hate that I mostly eat healthy but then a couple of days may go
by when the existence of vegetables is hypothetical at best. In fact there
isn’t a single thing that I can say with any confidence I do perfectly, and that
includes all of the things that are important to
me.
There is a story about when I was
learning to ride a bike, perhaps apocryphal, that I wanted to ride it perfectly
or not at all. Now, this makes sense, since to ride a bike imperfectly is more
or less to keep the bandaid company in business, but I didn’t like having a
grown up help, running along pushing, and was early manifesting not just
perfectionism but a certain stubbornness and, somehow by pushing off and falling
over again and again, determination stronger than my conviction that I was
absolutely losing face doing it. One of the many spiritual obstacles I’ve
wrestled with is an absolutism, wanting to be saint or sinner, but really not
being comfortable as a struggling believer, doing her best even when it was
nowhere near perfect, getting back on the bike and pushing off
again.
I guess it’s clearer to me now
that that particular form of perfectionism was an unabated egotism. Just as I
can see a difference in Aodán’s behavior when he’s trying to impress me
with how good he is being as opposed to when he’s really concerned about the
needs and feelings of one of his brothers, worrying about what sort of
Bahá’í I am is still thinking about myself and dwelling in some
place other than my love for the beauty at the center of my religion. And in
mothering there just isn’t room for the all or nothing
approach.
I went to a postnatal yoga
class today with Soren. I left the boys at their Bahá’í day camp
and fought traffic to get to the class five minutes late (and yes, I’m pretty
sure I hate being late because it makes it obvious to me I am not in control and
it’s wrong and potentially embarrassing and it’s not really about concern for
inconveniencing others…) And having not had the best night’s sleep, and
having hit every red light, and having not been greeted warmly by somebody when
I was dropping off the boys, I walked into class a little grumpy. And
Søren, after the breathing and centering exercises, decided he had to
nurse and be in my lap, and my usual attitude of taking what I can and being
grateful for that just dissolved. I really would have preferred a nice
kickboxing class to yoga, would have enjoyed pummeling a bolster instead of
trying to relax into it.
But learning
to breathe through the discomfort isn’t about putting your body through
ever-more painful contortions, I guess. I played the relativity game, reminding
myself that what had been a pretty mediocre morning contained things to be
grateful for — happy, healthy, attached children, a chance to go to yoga –
like the bumper sticker “A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work”, a
bad morning at yoga is still a good morning, my own health and absence of any
real complaints. It’s a curse of the human condition to need pain in order to
appreciate the absence of pain. And my grumpiness was a little useful in
telling me some things I need to adjust in my life — practice at loving my body
as it is, a more reasonable bedtime, an effort to greet people more warmly and
create the atmosphere I’d like to
experience.
I’m willing to accept that
I won’t beat my perfectionism all at once. I worry about transmitting it to the
kids — Aodán in particular has a tendency to be critical of himself and
frustrated when something he is working on doesn’t turn out the way he want it
to, but I am proud that some early lesson in turning a mistake into part of a
drawing did sink in. And maybe having an imperfect parent who is willing to
admit to the imperfections and struggle to do things a little better is not the
worst thing that could happen to a kid.
