Perfectionism

I'm feeling lazy today, so I'll just cut and paste a portion of a letter I sent to a friend recently.

<< My honest opinion is that perfection makes everything more difficult. >>

Why sure, but what else am I going to amuse myself with? Life would be very uninteresting if it was easy. Perfectionism is a quest for something better, a more vibrant existence. It drives me crazy to only be "good enough" I want to be better than! If you think about it, perfectionism is what makes the world go 'round. Without that quest for a better product, a new and easier way to do things, we'd still be living in caves.

Perfectionism is where we get Alpha males and females. Without striving to be better than the previous example, evolution would grind to a halt. I look at my perfectionism as challenging the pervasive apathetic attitude and furthering the evolution of the universe. Ok, by now I'm sure you realize I'm being cheeky. :-) There is a real point there though...wanting to be better than the previous examples is not a bad thing. It's called evolving.

Sure, some people strive to be perfect. That's unhealthy. What is healthy is always searching to better yourself and not settling for "good enough". Problems come when you expect other people to live up to your high personal standards. That's when I swear off people for a while and go read a good book instead.

Apparently I've been like this since birth. That doesn't mean I've always been a goody two-shoes...for instance when I was 6 months old... Mom, her sister and I were in the grocery store. Mom dropped a can of soup into the cart and I VERY loudly proclaimed; "Shit!" All the little old ladies turned and stared. I still get flak for that one. Mom insists I must have learned that language from my playgroup and not her.