You Are Perfect

A love letter.

This newsletter is in honor of the new year. I’ll be sending out my regular newsletter on Sunday.

Many people would say I use the word “perfect” too freely. I wonder, what do you think of, when you think of the word perfect?

I remember the first time I realized I was a perfectionist— I was sitting in my therapist’s office only a few years ago. She asked me if I thought I was a perfectionist. Immediately my mind conjured an image: a put-together woman wearing a pencil skirt, a blazer, sheer pantyhose and high heels. “I’m not good enough to be a perfectionist,” I said, and immediately saw that I was a perfectionist.

I’ll be unraveling my perfectionism for the rest of my life, I’m sure. The idea that there is a “perfect” and that “perfect” lives far out, somewhere I can’t reach is in tension with what I experience when I’m tuned in to myself.

The word perfect, like all words, has multiple meanings.

Whole. Complete. Flawless.

From the English parfit, it can mean “lacking in no way” (late 14th century). In Latin, perfectus can be interpreted at “complete” and “exquisite.”

It’s my belief that the conception of flaws are externally introduced. This comes from my decades of work with children, all of whom, at some point or another, are introduced to the concept of sin. I don’t mean sin in a religious sense (although sometimes it is in a religious sense), but rather the idea that an action can be enmeshed with one’s whole self, instead of physiological, psychological or emotional.

For instance, a child throws a small train at another child, and the train dents the other child’s forehead.

With this action, the idea that the child is inherently bad (the concept of shame) can be introduced quite easily. (child, what is wrong with you, why did you throw that train?)

Or, the child can learn that their action was bad. Toys are not for throwing. Etcetera.

Adults often impose their sense of morality onto children, when children haven’t yet learned the set of morals within their family unit and culture.

The imposition is interpreted as I am bad within the child. Slowly, the child’s sense of self is poisoned with I am bad, though some children receive only a drop of this poison, and some receive buckets, burying the perfect self under layers of shame.

As adults, we can walk around carrying this shame inside us, believing that if only I could or if I do this are statements that could create an entirely new self and experience for us, and that the new self and experience would be superior to the (flawed, shameful) self and experience.

You see my point, right?

We need to think more deeply about how the idea of perfection can easily be applied to any one of us. Not as something that blankets the future, interrupting growth and change, but as something that we embody within each singular moment. In this moment, reading these words, you are complete. There is nothing missing from you. You are exquisite. You are lacking in no way.

It is the idea that we are damaged, flawed, and in need of repair that makes us feel damaged, flawed, and in need of repair.

It’s a loop.

Inside a culture that culls our shame and insecurities for profit, allowing ourselves to be perfect while also holding ourselves accountable for mistakes we have made, are making, or will make in the future, is revolutionary.

Our mistakes and shortcomings don’t inhibit our perfection. Often they are actions and reactions resulting from other actions and reactions.

Accepting ourselves as fundamentally perfect, as whole and complete as we are, interrupts the damaging cycle of “self-improvement” in which our culture is so firmly entrenched.

I’m not saying don’t make any New Year’s Resolutions. I am saying, think about what they are, and if they reinforce shame, or help you to accept yourself in each moment, as you are.

Join me this New Year’s Eve for a chat, some writing, and a short meditation. Register HERE.

I love you.

Stacy