Imperfectly

“I'm okay, if you get me at a good angle
and you're okay, in the right sort of light
and we don't look like pages from a magazine
but that's all right - that's all right.”

--“Imperfectly,” Ani DiFranco

Single Dad Laughing (SDL) has done it again: he has shared a blog post that really challenged me and forced me to take a good hard look at things. I think you should too.

I have LOTS of imperfections!

He recently commemorated the one-year anniversary of one of his most important and most widely read posts, “The Disease Called Perfection.”  I had read it a long time ago but decided to do so again. I’m glad I did. And I recommend that you do the same. You can read the original post here, and then check out his anniversary follow-up here.

Very generally, the post talks about how we as a society all, in one form or another, strive for perfection. Even if we don’t think we’re “those people,” we are. It may not be in every facet of our lives, it may only be subconsciously…. but in there somewhere is the quest for the unattainable.

We want to be thinner.  We want to have more money.  We want to be the best parents. We want to drive the nicest cars. Whatever it is that we want, we either don’t have it, or what we do have isn’t good enough.

Thinking about it initially, if you consider our drive toward perfection, it seems ridiculous.  Human beings are, by nature, imperfect.  If all you do is focus on what you naturally cannot do, you’re bound to set yourself up for disappointment and heartache.

I've always wanted a shiny, new BMW. I drive a beat-up, old Subaru wagon. And I'm okay with that. (photo: financial-report.info)

As SDL points out, aiming for “perfection” has its drawbacks – major ones. Too many of us are casualties of this disease, whether in an extreme sense, such as suicide, or whether we embody it in subtler forms – eating disorders, anxiety, depression, loneliness, etc. Aiming for perfection causes all of those, and so many more.

But I don’t really want to talk about the problems with perfection in general; I can’t say it any better than SDL did:  we need to spread “the real.”  We need to dare to be real and to encourage others in our lives to do the same. If we open ourselves up, stop trying to be something we’re not, drop the façade and embrace our weaknesses….we just might find out that they are actually our strengths. We might end up with more friends, or with even better friendships with people we’re close to now. 

We might end up happier.

What I want to focus on today, though, is the effect of the “disease called perfection” on our children’s self-esteem.  If we are always focused on perfection, they will learn that from us. And the last thing I want my daughter to think is that being imperfect equals failure.

And I think a lot of us feel that way:  that if we don’t measure up somehow, or reach some unreachable goal, we’ve failed. Some of us won’t even bother trying to do something because we’re afraid of making a mistake.

I really don’t want Anna to grow up believing that something is only worth doing if you’re going to win. Because some of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far happened when I didn’t win.

After all, if I hadn’t gotten rejected from my top choice law schools, if I had put off school for another year instead of going to the one school that did want me, I might never have met the love of my life. And that means I wouldn’t be Anna’s parent today.

Thank God I “failed”!!! 

Heidi and me at my Bar swearing-in ceremony, Oct. 2006

I also don’t want Anna to believe her parents are perfect, and that if she’s not, we’ll be disappointed.  Because what matters most is how hard you try, not the end result. Most of all, I want her to learn that everyone makes mistakes, and I want her to learn from mine. 

I don’t want her to lie to me about who she loves because she’s afraid I’ll stop loving her and she doesn’t want to disappoint me. I don’t want her to keep important truths and feelings inside because she doesn’t have the guts to express them, even though they are eating her alive with anxiety. I don’t want her to feel that graduating from college with a B average is a failure because she got straight As in high school – when all that really matters is that she got a degree.

I don’t want her to change her appearance just to please someone she thinks she loves. I don’t want her to resist taking anxiety medication for years because to admit that it’s an internal problem, not just a problem caused by external circumstances, is failure.

I’ve done every single one of those things.  They didn’t feel good.

I’ve always seen myself as an open book.  Heidi has referred to me as “earnest.”  I try to always be honest.  I wear my heart on my sleeve.  I put my feelings and opinions right out there….perhaps even when I shouldn’t.  But none of that means that I am immune to focusing on perfection, to my own detriment. I do it just like everyone else does.  I am my own worst critic.

If I had been ready to live my life more openly, if I had been ready to be “real” at the various points when I did the things or felt the feelings I mention above, perhaps I’d have been happier sooner. Perhaps I would’ve learned earlier that I actually like myself, despite disliking some of my traits.

But I can’t go back and change that.  What I can do is make sure that Anna doesn’t feel like that. I can do my best to make sure that she doesn’t set up impossible standards against which to measure her success in life. I can make sure she knows that she is smart, and pretty, and wonderful just the way she is.

I can make sure she knows she can always talk to me about anything, and it’ll be okay. I can make sure she doesn’t miss out on fun experiences because she is afraid she’ll mess up. I can make sure she takes the time to enjoy life and doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Mama T pretending to be a pirate in Salem, Spring 2008. Yar.

At least, I can try!

I urge you all to think about how striving for perfection, even if it isn’t deliberate, even if it was only subconscious, has affected your life. If you’re brave, tell us about it in the comments. And please remember that our kids are always watching us, absorbing whatever it is we’re teaching them, whether we mean to be or not.

Let’s make sure they know that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be imperfect.  Because everybody is….and that’s what makes life so interesting.

I’ll leave you with another excerpt from Ani DiFranco’s “Imperfectly”:

“We get a little further from perfection
each year on the road
I think that's what they call character
I think that's just the way it goes
better to be dusty than polished
like some store window mannequin
….
when you're pretty as a picture
they pound down your door
but I've been offered love
in two dimensions before
and I know that it's not all
that it's made out to be
let's show them all how it's done
let's do it all imperfectly.”

An "imperfect" picture taken by Anna - and I love it for how it captured the moment.