From my essay, “Human Perfection” from episode
#73 of my podcast Waking from the American Dream.
Perfectionism kills.
It kills dreams. It kills adventures. It kills the joyful participation in life.
Hell, it kills all participation in life.
Life is a call and response game. Living life is participating in the call and response.
Body hungers, you eat. Child cries, you soothe.
A city gets hit by a hurricane, you help.
You have a vision of a scene between a father and son, and you write a play.
But with perfectionism, we set out to interrupt the natural call and response cycle.
We refuse the call, we fear the call, we ignore the call.
Our perfectionism says I can’t respond because… I’ll get my hands dirty, it’ll take too much time, people will think I’m crazy, or ugly or stupid
or not good enough…not good enough.