Perfection

“Look at the ice.”

My eyes lifted from my folded hands to the frozen pond in front of me.

“What do you see?”

Perfection. That is all I saw when my eyes fell on ice. The required perfection any time my feet touched ice. From the moment I took my first private lesson up until today, I had felt the pressure to be the best. It transferred to my grades, to running for student office, to any simple task. Do you know what perfectionism fuels? Anxiety. Intense, nerve-wrenching anxiety.

And I felt my heart race when I looked upon the ice.

“I see all the pressure I feel.” A sigh left my lips. “I once heard the crowds cheering my successes, but now it turns to boos in my failure. And the boos are deafening. They echo in my mind. They haunt my dreams. They… keep me from going on the ice.”

It felt good to admit it aloud. The weight of the pressure made my chest heavy. Admittance lightened it, slightly.

“You were not made for that.”

My head tilted at the comment. “I was not made to feel pressure?”

“You were not made to be perfect to others.”

The bluntness of the statement made me gasp. I was not made to be perfect to others? To anyone else, the statement is obvious, hence the expression, ‘nobody’s perfect’. But perfection had become my identity. Our identity is what we put value in. Some people put value in their occupation: ‘I am a teacher. I am a nurse. I am a lawyer.’ Some people put value in their familial relationships: ‘I am a mom. I am a dad. I am a wife. I am a son.’ Other put value in their physical characteristics: ‘I am a black man. I am a Hispanic woman.’ And, finally, there are those like me who put value in their non-physical characteristics: ‘I am a giver. I am happy.’ I am a perfectionist. My goal is to be perfect. I long to say ‘I am perfect.’

“Then what was I made for? What was I made to be?” I turned to my Father. He calmly sat alongside me, surveying the frozen pond before us. “If it’s not to be perfect, then what is it?”

My Father shook his head. “You misunderstand. You are not made to be perfect to others. You already are perfect. You are my daughter. Any daughter of mine can only be perfect.”

I was perfect just for being his daughter?

“The world is imperfect. To meet their standards, you would have to be imperfect. And you are not.”

“I would have to change who I am in order to make other people happy,” I agreed.

“To make some people happy,” he corrected me. “Everyone has different opinions on what they want.”

I nodded my head. “Can’t please everyone.” His advice made sense, but how could I change my entire thought process – a thought process I maintained for decades – in an instant? “If my purpose isn’t to be perfect to others, because I already am perfect, then what is it?”

“Your purpose? To love. To be kind. To be generous. To be forgiving.”

“Oh.” In my pursuit of being ‘the best’, these were qualities I had ignored. Love? How could I love if I had no relations? I spent all my time training or performing; I barely had time for others. Generosity? When was the last time I did charity work? My money sat in my banking accounts, and I certainly did not give any time to volunteer work. Kindness? I was known for my temper. I had even thrown my phone at a reporter’s head for asking me why I failed on the ice. And forgiveness? I did not have the heart for it. Every person who had ever wronged me were figuratively dead to me.

My Father turned to me with a smile. He knew these things about me. He knew everything. “When you start living your purpose, all your other troubles will fall into place. You will feel the burdens lift off your shoulders – the anxiety will go.”

I stood and walked forward in the short span of snow between our seats and the pond. “It sounds like a simple solution – but it won’t be easy.”

“Being your best never is. But it is easier than being THE best.”

That was the key. That was what my perfectionism could latch onto. I did not need to strive to be the best at anything. I just needed to strive to be my personal best: the best version of me I could be.

I moved a tentative foot forward to the frozen pond, and my toe pick scraped the surface. The sound of the booing that once echoed in my mind when I went on the ice ceased. Silence. Peaceful silence.

Perfection.