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The curse of perfection
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If your objective is to be perfect, you will do less, reduce the risks you take and seek out fewer adventures in life. You will live a more repressed life, says Peter Kelly…
They say drink is the curse of the working classes and work is the curse of the drinking classes and perfection is the curse of the professional classes.
Before you even enter work in a profession, there is a pressure to be perfect. To get perfect school results, to be the perfect student. Sometimes when you are talking to someone in a professional job they will answer with the word ‘perfect.’
I even catch myself doing it sometimes. I will give you an example. Someone says ‘What time should we meet up to go to the cinema? Say, 7pm?’ The other person nearly always replies ‘Perfect!’
What is wrong with being perfect? In the DVD extras of the movie ‘The Piano Teacher,’ (I went back in time to research this opinion piece) by the superb Austrian film director Michael Haneke, he talks about how perfection is the ultimate hiding place.
When you do everything perfect and are perceived as perfect, you kind of disappear. Perfectionism can be isolating and repressive.
As humans, we bond much easier with one another through our flaws and vulnerabilities then through are strengths and virtues (note; this is not an accidental error but a dyslexic-inspired grammar mistake so I can ingratiate myself with you, the reader and show you I’m not perfect).
Everyone wants a perfect employee but who wants a perfect partner or friend? People want empathy in friends and partners. When you are perfect or you perceive yourself to be perfect, it is a lot harder to have empathy.
When you perceive yourself to be perfect, do you expect your partner or children to be perfect? The expectation of perfection can be a prison. If your objective is to be perfect, you will do less, take less risks, seek out less adventure in life. You will live a more repressed life.
In a professional job, it can be very hard to balance the work pressure from employers and regulators to be perfect against the human need to accept your flaws and show your vulnerabilities in order to have a rich social life.
And as we saw very clearly during lockdown, social isolation and poor mental health are directly correlated. Socialising is not a luxury. It is vital sustenance for good mental health.
It is said that perfectionism is the greatest curse for any creative person because it condemns them to only see the flaws in whatever wonderful thing they create.
I believe that everyone should pursue some creative outlet, in much the same way everyone should do some form of exercise. That was the big message in the art of Andy Warhol. People should not worry about the merit of what they create, they should create for the sake of creating.
And if you have ever seen one the Brillo Boxes Warhol created, you might say he did not just talk the talk, he walked the walk. Those Brillo Boxes originally sold for $200, which must have seemed ridiculous for what was essentially an imitation of a box you could buy in the supermarket. Those boxes are now worth over $3 million. Art, eh!
You may know that I perform stand-up comedy. If comedians had a pound for every time someone came up to them after a gig and said they would love to try stand-up, but stand-ups are a lot better remunerated than they currently are, they would be very wealthy.
So why do people not pursue their impulse to do the thing they want to try? It’s because they want to avoid failure or negative judgement. Maintaining the illusion and projection of perfection is seen as preferable to pursuing something they are dying to try.
Perfectionism is said to be on the increase. One would imagine social media is playing a role in this. Any failure has the potential to be seen by a much bigger audience.
The chorus of criticism has the potential to be much louder. Anxiety also appears to be increasing with young people. Perfectionism and anxiety are linked.
You cannot learn how to do stand-up comedy with a perfectionist’s mindset. You can only learn by failure and it does not matter how funny you are, nobody is good at the start.
One thing I picked up very quickly is that people do not mind failure and they will always respond well to someone giving it a go. When I hadn’t a clue what I was doing on stage, I always tried to go with the attitude of full commitment.
And I found that even when I did bad sets, the audience would respond well as there is something exciting about seeing someone giving it a go and being a little daring.
And, of course, not being held back by fear of failure or negative perception.
Peter Kelly is a pharmacist based in London and a stand-up comedian.