The Height of Perfection

by Janet Levine

When I was younger, my sister never failed to remind me that I should be careful of what I wished for. I might, she always said, actually get it.

I should have listened.

What I wished for most when I was young was to be “a perfectionist.” I thought that those were people who did things perfectly. And I so wanted to do things—any things at all—really well. No matter what I did, I didn’t think it was good enough.
And so my wish became true. I became a perfectionist. Hell, I was one already. I just didn’t understand that perfectionists don’t DO things perfectly, they just want to and, because they (we!) are such stickler’s for detail and so demanding of everything they do, they never, ever believe that they do anything well enough. I resemble that greatly.

The problem, of course, with perfection is that you can’t ever get there. From anywhere. It’s kind of like living at the tip of a promontory or high in the beautiful but distant hills. The bigger problem, however, is the fact that you continually have to motivate yourself to do things. Things that you just know will never be good enough. For you.

The other thing my sister always told me was that no one really pays that much attention to anyone else other than them. Or, as I frequently tell my daughter when she is freaking that she is not beautiful or smart enough (what? You didn’t believe that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree?), to the degree that anyone is looking at you it’s not to giggle at your real or imagined flaws. They are not really thinking of you at all. They are thinking, “I wonder what that person thinks of ME.”