PERFECTION

My mom and Dr. Spock would be proud of me today. I have set aside for now, the need to strive for perfection in at least one small task.

Yes, I was a Spock Baby – not one “raised by the book”, but one studied by Spock so he could write the book. And early on, as he observed me putting the blocks back in the box and continuing to dump them out over and over when the resulting top surface of blocks was not perfectly flat, he urged my mother to break me of the habit of striving for perfection – or, he predicted, I would have trouble throughout my life.

My mom often said in my teen years–as she observed my room and the mounds of clothes and other junk scattered helter-skelter—that she had done too good of a job and wished I still yearned for just a little sense of neatness and perfection.

But little did she know, I had merely prioritized the list of what needed to be perfect. Over and over I was disappointed in the results of whatever I did…away from home. Intellectually, I eventually learned the hard lesson, that perfection is a worthy goal but certainly not an achievable destination. And with that, my work mantra became, “nothing is perfect; if we ever achieve that, I will retire”. I’m sure many around me outwardly joined me in that quest for perfection – only because it might mean I would retire and be out of their hair!

And of course, here I am-many years later, still striving for that point and place in time when it all will be “just perfect” instead of yet another of life’s lessons and a “teachable” moment.

But I am here to report that progress has been made! After struggling for some 30 hours over the last four days to conquer the simple technological task of adding project photos to the sidebar pages on this blog site, I have come to the point of saying for the first time in my life, I think, “it’s good enough”! Because no matter what I do to carefully line up the pictures in a neat order, once I hit the PUBLISH button, the demons in my computer take over and rearrange them – so they look like the helter-skelter mess of my bedroom long ago.

After sleeping on the issue, I got up this morning planning to edit and trash, took another look, and said, “at least they are up, and that is just good enough-at least for now”. Hallelujah!