Notes On Perfection
"I have my annoying bits, too, but you still love me."
The good thing about getting older is getting wiser to all the nonsense we have spent our entire adult life until now convincing ourselves we should be (or appear to be), or else… My “nonsense” was a need to be perfect, among others. This became the distorted lens (the irony!) through which I see the world and my self. No room for mistakes. No compassion for flaws. No longer remembering to have fun*. The most detrimental thing about this obsession with perfection is, it has arms that will reach and reach for all of your life to feed itself. It spreads to everything you do and see, and you begin to hold the same impossible standards against people you care about—friends, parents, co-workers, your partner. Even strangers—at the next table, on the same plane ride, in the street passing you by—are not spared. You judge the world as you judge yourself. What does that achieve? We (yes, it's usually Us and not Other People) keep disappointing ourselves over and over again. Because we're always looking for perfection, everything looks flawed. Because I am not good enough for me, I am not good enough for anyone, and no one and nothing is ever good enough in my addled eyes.
👆🏻 Moments of me captured by D at a shoot: (1) Clearly enjoying my chat with Riyana, and (2) focused, completely present. I didn’t know I wear joy and thoughtfulness in such expressions when I’m not trying to wear the look of perfection. When I saw these photos, I surprisingly did not tear my self apart, writhing at every imperfection as I’m prone to do. Instead, I saw through the avatar into a glimpse of my self in my most natural, uninhibited expression. It was a new feeling, and it felt good. Felt healthy. In the spirit of self acceptance/celebration, I want to practise acknowledging and appreciating my beauty in every line, every crease, every spot and freckle—for they contain the stories of my life; they remind me I’ve come a long way to make it here.
There's more. Thanks to your mandate to live up to the perfect vision made up in your mind, you're never ready to start on the thing you've been dreaming of starting. Need for perfection breeds procrastination. If and when you finally convince yourself to embark, you'll quite easily convince yourself to quit before you could fail to meet your ever-out-of-reach expectations of the "perfect" outcome. Then there's the need to show up perfect. A constant hive of anxious thoughts buzzing in your ear. My hair is not parting like it should. It's framing my face weird. Great, an untimely pimple to add to the constellation of freckles and spots. Do my lips look dry? Arrhh, manicure, chipped** on the pinky finger—will they notice? I often imagine each of these cracks to be an inviting window into the messy corners of my being—all my uglies on full display, in the spotlight. This is not an easy way to live. It is exhausting. Oh, how we make our own hell, and lie in it. (**True story: Whenever this happens, which did only a few days ago, I'd put a plaster over the disgraced nail. Better "injured" than imperfect. I know. I'm rolling eyes at myself right now 🙄.)
👆🏻 Something I read this morning, hit home. By @ankita.shah_
Age has taught me the foolishness—and futility—of wanting Life and all of her uncontrollables to be perfect the way I want it. Age has taught me to let go of all that mental debris. All that weight! Though admittedly still difficult, I am trying on a lighter way of being. Or at least be cognisant of the weight of all the shoulds I still carry, then make a new and wiser choice: Put it down. See? Nothing happened. The world did not combust. And I am doing more doing than thinking, more living than living inside my head. It begins with awareness. And then you practise choosing the wiser, healthier choice, until this new habit/narrative overthrows the old, toxic one.
I realise I take myself too seriously. I take life too seriously. (I haven't always been this way though. My mum told me recently that I was a vivacious, bubbly little girl. But Life will take the bubbles away—so we can learn to see it for what it is.) Luckily, I have friends around me and a partner who have this enviable lightness of being joyously and ridiculously themselves. (Here it is, right on cue, I hear Daven's mantra for me in my mind's PA system: "N-O-B-O-D-Y C-A-R-E-S!") Through them, I have been able to rediscover and reconnect with my own sense of humour, play and childlike silliness. The bubbles 🫧 are still here. Have always been here within me all along. I am tempted to say that I’m slowly letting go of perfection. But I think the more accurate way to put it is that I am changing my relationship with perfection. I still believe in the merits and value of aiming high and pouring your heart and soul into how you show up for yourself and what matters to you. But it's more a shoot-for-the-moon-and-land-on-a-star mentality. (A star is a great place to land.) Perfection does not define me, I define perfection. So I reframe, reshape, recolour what it needs to be for me from day to day. Giving something my best, whether it's a mundane chore like washing the dishes or a project that's important to me, being the best possible version of me in any given moment, whatever the outcome—that deserves 100 points and a gold star for that moment. My best has to be enough today. For tomorrow will ask something different of me.
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. The idea that I don’t need to be perfect to be perfectly okay is such a big, cleansing breath of relief and release. I don’t need to be perfect to be deserving of love and happiness. There are countless colours in the universe, many still unnamed, many more yet to exist, why should I insist on confining my self to this one colour of perfection instead of experiencing, discovering and allowing my self to express a whole world of other colours I contain?
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. The idea that I don’t need to be perfect to be perfectly okay is such a big, cleansing breath of relief and release.
My wise friend said to me over dinner the other evening: “You can’t be perfect, my dear. No one is. I have my annoying bits, too, but you still love me.” She’s right, you know. Love is loving them despite the bits you don’t like. Why haven’t I been able to extend the same love to my self? (Well, actually, I know some of the reasons, but that's a whole other conversation.) It has taken me many, many years—to learn to choose be a friend to my self. (Love, after all, is a choice.) A choice I'm now old enough, wise enough to keep choosing day after day, again and again.
Pleasure Over Perfect: A List
This book: Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico
“Reality didn’t always live up to the pictures.”My Heart To Heart with Riyana Rupani who talked about her own relationship with perfection. What she has learned and become a mantra is this:
“We don’t need to be perfect—we only need to be better… If we set perfection as the goal, we’re destined for disappointment. But if we focus on progress, on what’s next, on simply being better than yesterday, we set ourselves free. And that? That is beautiful.”
This sound healing experience: “Coming Home to Yourself” with Mayuko at Space2B.
This video: Charlie Follows is one of my favourite at-home yoga teachers. I discovered her only this year, when one of her classes popped up on my YouTube feed. I do well with people, generally, who has a calm, soothing energy about them, and even more so when it involves my well-being and self-care practices. I love this video for the heart and soul-ness of it—how she encourages “practice makes progress”, not perfect, by walking us through her own journey. I found myself feeling happy for this woman I had never met in real life. Maybe one day her story may show up here on THE COEUR. Maybe I will start by manifesting it now. 💗
This Jeanette Winterson realisation:
“I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”
The movie: Book Club: The Next Chapter, for a fun, delightful journey with four septuagenarian best friends who show us what, in the end, genuinely matters in life. (Spoiler: It is not perfection. Even the most perfect plan can be destined for disaster—a divine reroute to the one that’s right for you.)
This podcast: Kate Winslet on How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
“I think women as they get older become juicier and sexier and more embedded in their truth and who they are, and are more powerful and more able to walk through the world and care less. And that is an empowering thing. And so I say to my friends all the time, you look amazing.”
An attempt at painting at this recent workshop hosted by the beautiful people at Hermès.
Thank you for reading ❥. Let's look forward to June's new adventures and revelations, failings and getting better, winnings and learnings. Let's embrace all of it—the mess and the glory. In the mean time, remember, words have power, and I hope you'll always choose the kind ones. Until the next letter,
