Perfectionist Anonymous!!!

'99.9% is a failure...only 100% is a pass.'

Does life have to be perfect? Should life be perfect….or more precisely can life be perfect??
Do we really require perfection to be happy? Must our alarm wake us up at 6 am sharp, breakfast on the table by 7.05 and our daily bus to work right there on the nick of 7.30.
Must our grades be straight As for us to get the best jobs and consequently the best life? Will our relationships last longer if they were perfect? Perfect with the perfect settings and the perfect partner? Can we truly ever find perfection or it just a fleeting shadow some will forever chase as the proverbial dog chases its tail? Is perfection really the path to ‘the good life’?
Growing up, I was taught to believe that the best things in life were perfect and to truly be happy and fulfilled you must get that perfect grade, that perfect job, the perfect spouse and have that perfect family with cute…perfect smiles. I often wondered why my family wasn’t perfect, I mean, we had great moments and I love them to bits and would never trade them for…hmmm let me not be too optimistic, I would trade some of my extended family for a …LOL, just a silly thought. Yeah, my family is definitely far from perfect so why should I strive for perfection? Is it truly attainable? Is it a utopic dream that some of us must chase (I say ‘some’ because I know better) to feel a reason for existing? And more importantly, is it really worth the sacrifice??
Do not get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we all sit in the sidelines and watch life pass us by. I'm definitely not trying to undermine the importance of discipline and dedication to our dreams but I'm asking the bigger question here? Is this the only way to get there? And when we get there, what do we do??

What is perfection to you? Is it when you get the perfect job or that spiked raise and buy that flaming hot Ferrari and move to a house across the hill? Is it when you discover the cure for cancer and save countless lives from untimely death and painful treatment? Is it a situation when the world is in perfect peace and there are no more hungry children and wars everywhere? Do you even think you are part of what can bring perfection to your world?
I ask this, because I answered all these questions years ago! My answers told me I was different and that I had a long journey to achieve perfection. For many people, life is a learning process, a continuous cycle of making mistakes and learning from them, crying, smiling and embraces whatever greets us, good or evil; mine was different. I saw life as a set of choices…the good ones, enrich you and the people around you; the bad ones demean you and hurt the people around you. Good choices are usually harder to make and bad choices can be avoided by learning from other people’s mistakes. Believe it or not, its simple and very effective. All that philosophy about ‘experience is the best teacher… to me meant, other people’s experience is the best teacher.
This became my moto, since I grew up accustomed to working hard for what I want, no shortcuts, simply doing the dirty work; it came quite naturally! I kept a fairly strict routine, had my goals (to have the highest grades in JSCE (that’s like a mid-high school exam)) and the long term goal of blab la bla… you know the usuals. I remember the first guy that asked me out received a stern warning along with a few tips on how to get his grades up.

As profitable as this was, what shocked me the most was how I became highly intolerable of people’s inadequacies. I just couldn’t understand why people didn’t work so hard….why they blamed the government for everything, or why they just wouldn’t apply themselves to get the good things in life.
Even more infuriating were the people who took shortcuts, who cheated, who bought their way through everything! Talk about being born in the wrong century!! In retrospect, I think I was so straight I was a sharp piercing knife…heavily critical. And what did I gain?

To be continued....