Perfection

When I was in the third grade I had a homeroom teacher who was known to be very strict. I might not remember her accurately so saying that she was an old witch who might have swallowed a kid or two may be unfair. However, I remember how I felt: I was terrified. I was so scared of her that I did my best to do everything I thought she wanted, with the highest degree of perfection. If I didn't, she might get angry. She might not like me. And if she got angry and didn't like me, bad things would certainly happen. So I did all my homework. I learnt to write in cursive. I read all the things and studied for my tests. I became one of her favorite students. All. Perfect. All. Because. I. Was. Terrified. 

Fast forward 25 something years. My sister was getting married and as my gift to her and her fiancé I offered to make their wedding invitations by hand. I worked hard on the design, which included a stamp I designed myself, some hand-sewn fabric, and a piece of wood with their initials burnt into it. A hundred and fifty cards. Quite elaborate. All hand-made.

Because of the stamps and the other components, the layout of the content of the cards required heart-surgery precision. The slightest mistake and the stamp might not fit entirely on the card without the fabric or the wood piece looking off. I spent hours adjusting fonts, margins, layouts, and likely killed a tree from all the samples I printed. I was not done until it was… perfect. I then had the final design printed at a professional store.

It must have been midnight on the night before I had to assemble all the cards when I noticed that, while the printing was perfect, the way they had cut the margins at the store was not. The content of the card did not fall precisely where they should have. All the hours I had invested in creating the perfect layout had been trashed by someone who had clearly not gone to my third grade. 

Rage and despair does not begin to describe how I felt. I woke up my sister in the middle of the night sobbing so profusely that she thought someone had died. I held the cards in my hand with such guilt and heartbreak that anyone might have thought that I had ruined the entire wedding. I certainly felt that way. I felt like a failure and cursed at a faceless person who didn't know how to use a paper cutter. My sister consoled me as if I was a third grader, worried with disbelief that a mistake she couldn't even notice could break me in such a way. 

And here is the thing: I had cried that same way before. Many times. I cried that way when I didn't get that one job. I cried that way after my microphone broke without me realizing it while I welcomed the entire auditorium during my grad school commencement ceremony. I cried that way when my cousins broke the vase because they were running behind me, after my aunt had asked us to stop. I cried that way after all the break ups when I could not understand what I had done wrong. 

I'd learnt long before those moments that bad things happened if I was not perfect. That I would only be loved if I did things perfectly.  So, there I was, a grown woman, balling over a millimeter mistake on a card, waiting for disaster to ensue. 

Years later my life coach would ask me when it was okay for me to make a mistake. That question took me right back to that moment with my sister, when I was sitting on the edge of her bed throwing a tantrum. I realized then how ridiculous it all was: A third grade child created a narrative about an evil witch teacher that ate children if they weren't perfect. That same child believed that love was conditional on perfection. It had never been okay to make a mistake.

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As adults we have the responsibility to choose what parts of what happened in our past serve us and which parts don't. Believing that we are only lovable if we are perfect is a trap that keeps us stuck and away from love because perfection is never achievable. Perfection is therefore a belief I consciously decided to let go of. 

I've recreated the narrative too. I am grateful for the things I learnt in the third grade: I earned scholarships for college and grad school because I learnt english and developed a liking for reading and writing in the third grade. Thanks to my teacher. My attention to detail - which I believe I developed then too - has also earned me much respect professionally.  Thanks to my teacher. 

Most important, however, I now allow myself to make mistakes. I can misspell words, even in public writing, yes, without calling the holy inquisition on myself. I can cook a less-than-great meal without thinking I gave the guest dysentery. I can drop the ball on a relationship without thinking that they will leave and hate me forever. 

This does not mean that I make mistakes intentionally (although I did practice this for a while to help me understand that a mistake is not the end of the world. You should try it!). It means that I can make mistakes because I know that I can always forgive myself.

So now, the little third grade girl and I have conversations - and good laughs - about all the ridiculous things that used to make us suffer. Now we know that love is not conditional on us being perfect.  Y eso, eso sabe a libertad. 

With love, 

mE