Let not the perfect become the enemy of the good
“Nah, I’m at best type B+,” I respond if anyone suggests I’m a Type A personality - a driven perfectionist. People make this assumption because lawyers have a reputation for it. But that’s actually not how I roll.
I attribute this to my dad who punctuated most tasks with “good enough for our purposes.” This was particularly true with his music-making for which his keenness outstripped his ability by a wide margin. He’d often say, “I had three violin lessons as a kid and then my teacher died.” He’d pause for a moment and then posit “cause and effect?” with that glint in his eye that was code for ‘I’ve just said something very funny but it would be rude to laugh myself. But you may.’ In his mid-life, he took up violin again and then in his retirement, he began buying a second-hand instrument every December with a goal to play carols on it the following Christmas. Which he did. Sort of. By the time he died, he was proud he could find all the notes on the flute, clarinet, piano, double-bass, violin, recorder, and trumpet. He had a forgiving ear and took considerable liberties with timing. Accompanying him, as I often did on piano or cello, prepared me well for following my dogs through the park - seemingly without direction but apparently on the trail of a scent known only to them.
I like to think my own cello-playing was somewhat more accomplished. Indeed, I was a decent sectional player in the orchestra, sawing with gusto in the easy bits and air bowing like crazy when the passage was too high, too fast, or too awkward. I didn’t care - I was there for fun, better to be quiet where I wasn’t confident. (It was more challenging when I played chamber music. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re the lone cellist.) That’s the thing - I am subtly imperfect. I prefer not making big showy mistakes.
Humorist, Jenny Lawson, in her memoir, Furiously Happy, says if her husband died, she’d end up sitting in a dark room with no functioning TV because she can’t fix things and has therefore developed a high degree of tolerance for things not working. I can relate.
One bulb in my kitchen blew months ago, and another last week, leaving just one glowing orb. Yes, I know how to change a lightbulb - good grief, I’m not THAT useless - but buying lightbulbs has become more complicated with LED and compact CFCs and all sorts of other confusing options. I’ve got to get it together to replace them before I’m cooking by the glow of the cellphone.
I have a TV in the basement I can’t watch anymore - I don’t remember how to connect to cable from its remote.
I had the house rewired nearly three years ago and my walls are still dotted with scores of holes, the handyman’s job of filling them having been delayed first by lack of money and then by COVID. (I’ve carefully positioned my computer in my home office so the holes are off camera. The unavoidable hole is covered with a sticky note that is fortunately more or less the same colour as the paint on the wall.)
Some of my imperfectionism might be rooted in laziness:
A casual observer would think my car has all four hubcaps - they’d be wrong. Watched one roll away 18 months ago. Couldn’t be bothered to stop and grab it.
I almost always have one ragged fingernail.
My kitchen counter always has dirty dishes on it because even when I load the dishwasher there are more dishes to wash than can fit into it.
And yet other flaws I live with come from not wanting to throw things out that are nearly done but not quite. There is a threadbare spot on my living room rug - it’s under furniture. And a broken zipper at the back of a sofa cushion. And clothes with rips in places that don’t see the light of day. Or don’t appear on Zoom.
My imperfectionism was an area of at best mystery and at worst consternation for Jack, who was the opposite in so many ways. He shook his head with horror when I loaded the dishwasher because it never met his exacting standard. When he cleaned, he did so thoroughly. He never once said “good enough for our purposes.” And I most definitely do say it.
Except when I don’t. Colleagues will tell you I can’t review a document that hasn’t been prepared using Word “styles” and I cringe when Ontario is shortened to ON - these and a host of other things are not allowed in our style guide and therefore I cannot accept them. It’s not just about form - substance can drive me nuts too, like writing that’s rife with jargon, passive voice, or spelling and grammatical errors. Truth is, I am a professional perfectionist but a private imperfectionist. I think this comes from dad too - for sure he was a bit slapdash when drywalling the house, something he did for fun. But he was never casual with the dairy cows, his primary source of income.
I feel for people who apply those standards to all parts of their lives. If the only way you can do something is to do it perfectly, you likely end up doing fewer things since most of us do not do things well from the get-go. COVID has provided us ample time to try doing new things, and I hope even the perfectionists have enjoyed their failures as much as their successes.
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I wrote this a few days ago and just this morning - December 5 - I received an article link in my Twitter feed confirming my belief: perfectionism is not a positive trait and is getting worse among younger people, fuelled by parents; high expectations and crazy standards set by social media. Take a read if you’re interested: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/27/20975989/perfect-mental-health-perfectionism
