Perfectionism

This is going to hurt a lot of people it certainly hurt me. Perfection is unattainable, and without accepting the limits of humanity, which is the imperfect, our lives will be a catalogue of disappointment, and death will be the last and final disappointment that you never achieved.

The drive for perfection achieves many things, puts men on moons, kids in high school, and new ways to cure cancer. It is a drive that has some fantastic outcomes for humanity, but for the person that is driven to this you would wonder how this felt.

They say Robert Maxwell, a UK media mogul, was born to poverty, and sought to be the perfect business man,in terms of money and power. It is also said that he was at the height of his power a huge gambler, who thought nothing of putting a million pounds on the roll of a dice. The irony here is that he had such disdain for that which he sought to make him perfect. His drive for perfection was also that which he could care nothing for and throw it all away on the tumble of dice.

So how do we combine the two, the ideal the beautiful of perfection that is so close to so manys heart, and the limits that we as humans face?

It would seem to give perfection over to humanity, and to in service to the whole that you are made up of, aim to move the imperfect towards the perfect. I realise this implies effectively a creator, be it Nature or God, you might also think as a Marxist it could be capital, or a philosophic thinking fredian libido.

The main point is as humans we are essentially Beings in the World. We discover ourselves there and we pose our questions there, and the questions that say this could be perfect are best given answer by the world itself through our contribution to it.

References
The thoughts about perfectonism originated from Emmy van Deurzens book, Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice, page 17.