Wednesday 8 September 2010

On the road to perfection..




Male/female/in-between, everyone inclusive; we all seek to be the most perfect version/s of ourselves that we can muster up in any and every way possible. In all facets of life we all seek to present the most streamline, close-as-possible to perfect copy we can. Looks, careers, partners, achievements, friends....or to put that in a more accurate, albeit, less concise manner, the "company" we choose to keep. Our reputations, the things we own, our "p", our "swag"...whatever you wish to call it.
We are in a constant process of engineering, re-engineering, constructing, demolishing, "putting out there", taking back or should I say viciously stamping out things we feel we should be known for and things we wish never ever to be associated with us/our pasts (respectively). I was going to be crass and label all these activities "bullshit" and generally be my normal judgmental self lol....what can I say, it comes easily to me maybe because I know what I am and how that differs from what I would imagine to be the most perfect print-out of myself. Lol forgive my metaphors that remind you of being in an office btw.... bear with me, my mind is consumed by work-related things, I cannot shake it off!!!
Back to my perfect-talk, I could just stop generalising right now and say "I do this and I do that, shame on me, I'm a bad person and a freak.... but I'm not going to be that big-headed and think that I am the only one out there who wants to be the best version of themselves that they can be, the only one who wants to fulfill whatever expectations and hopes their loved ones and families have for them....I can't be the only one who sometimes feels like their best might have let them down just a little bit that one time..... (and those other times too). I thank God that is true though, I get happy when I see someone genuinely being hard on themselves for something that they tried and didn't do as well as they thought they would, because it makes me feel like I'm not alone in that feeling....I could have been better but I didn't quite make it... but I know next time I get the chance, I will grab it with both hands (have you seen my arms?) and I am not letting it go without a full-on struggle.
Now, you see what happens when I personalize what I'm talking about? lol....I get scary. But really though, it all depends on the reasoning behind the 'wanting to be perfect' I mean not all forms of being hard on yourself make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, damn sometimes, I get the chills listening to a person going on about how they could have got something or done something (notice how in both cases, the word "something" can be replaced with the word "someone") if only they had twisted this lie a little bit more than they already did.... sometimes I marvel at the lengths we go to to obscure the real picture of what we are. I mean yesterday I just thought back to something I saw some days ago (yes, sometimes it takes me days or even weeks (literally) to think about things) and I was like wow! I mean, you live with someone (you are a girl and the someone is a boy) and they do not know that you have facial hair and hairy legs??? Come on...I mean no one should go around shouting I have a 'tache and beard or my legs are bla bla bla because we all know if he had seen you that way and by "that way" I mean not perfect the first time he met you, you may not be living together now. But still, I mean is it a bit extreme or is it me that everytime you need to do a little bit of grooming, you would have to run somewhere and hide to pluck your facial hair out of your chin, neck, wherever else?
Well to be honest if people were not so shallow, we wouldn't have to be so extreme about things and by "people" I mean guys. A guy can swear he loves you and you are beautiful, but just ask him one time honestly honestly does he prefer your face with or without make-up or your hair with or without extensions and if he is honest, his answer will probably be along the "I like the more enhanced you" line. So really, its just a matter of give and take, not saying families and loved ones are always hard on each other, but most of the kids I went to school with who used to get suicidal over missing out on two marks in a test or whatever would always do that because either:(a) their older sibling always got full marks
(b) their mummy/daddy would beat them
(c) their lesson teacher would beat them
(d) they were really crying out of relief but just pretending so they could feel smart and act like they were not happy they got okay/good marks. Idiots.
One time I did cry over a mark I got though, it was French and it was in SS1 or 2, I don't know what made me so angry, I mean I used the French class mainly as art class or catching-up time. The French teacher's trousers are something I will never-in-my-life forget I mean I stared at those things so much, almost ten years after, I remember every detail, and please you cannot concentrate so much on an item of clothing or anything in so much detail and expect to be listening to the words coming out of the wearer's mouth. So yeah I think I got like 48 percent and I just needed to get a pass so at least I wouldn't have any "red biro" in my little report book thingy....ah well I saw it and I cried hot tears because all I wanted for once was my new page in the book to be written in all blue ink, so as my mum opened it, she would involuntarily scan and then at the end of her first glance at my continuous assessment results, she would look up with a smile before she looked back down at it to read the comments and then at the end of the ordeal she would put it down and tell me I did a good job, but I should work harder at Maths.
But yeah, it just seems like a little bit of self-expectation is healthy, I don't know if that is already an established term, but what I mean by it is expectations we set ourselves for ourselves. Things we want to do as impeccably as we can so we can look back and say "yes, I did that", "that was all me", and "no, no-one will ever know why it makes me so happy/proud that I did that". Because anything we do to please other people will please those people for a minute or two and it is forgotten, it is in our nature we will forget and if we don't forget, we will pick holes and criticise and be cynical about it. That's just how it is.
So yeah...... no worries if your best wasn't the best that one time, there is still something else, another time, the next time even for you to do just what you want to do, the way you want to do it.....and I bet the next time you get a shot at doing it, the memory of how you felt when you did it imperfectly will be the best teacher for this opportunity.
When we accept that perfection is a long, long, looooong-ass way off, we tend to do things the best way we can and that my friends, is as close to perfect as we can possibly get.

Grace and love, me.x

2 comments:

  1. LMAO i love the d reason *they where really crying out of relief...* truthfully those kids used to get on my nerves, and Monsieur Epolits (or whatever the spelling is) trousers where classic dont forget the basket shoes! *dead* lol... sigh in the end we need to all just embrace ourselves and be the best that we can without acting like we are in a race with the rest of the world which is something im working on. Sometimes I think wow why am I still at this phase of my life?? but ive come to realise that anytime i get to the next phase im craving i dont even acknowlege that ive moved forward and i still say why am i here?? lol cant i be there instead? and its a permanent cycle this race for what we think is perfection!... you know i think guys will stop being shallow the second girls stop allowing their shallowness! lol like girls always need to put up a front when it comes to guys and sometimes even when it comes to their female friends the hell? like if we show our selves as the realest we can be guys wouldnt always be like yo my girl has to have this and that and make selections like we are on a menu lol o well peace and love cherie!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah its scary when we don't realise the important stuff cos we are chasing the little things.

    So girls too, are we shallow or not? Kissss.x

    ReplyDelete