Strange Ideas of Perfection.
(28.08.23)
A wise man once said to me
on the cusp of running a major public event about which I was feeling rather anxious: ‘never let the perfect become the enemy of the good’. He helped me to recognise and let go of an unhelpful compulsion and false image of the ‘perfect’. I was able to consider the time, energy, thought and love I had invested in the event preparation and also to accept the inevitable reality of some things probably being a bit clunky due to circumstances either beyond my control and/or my realistic capacity, and to see the opportunity for humility and simple faith within all of this. I was able to experience myself, my efforts and limitations, and the event itself, as being enough.
On the topic of perfection, Luke’s gospel (10:38-42) reveals a very short and archetypical story about two friends of Jesus, Martha, and Mary. Jesus comes to visit and Mary tunes into what he most needs, presence, and attention. Martha however is distracted by her project of perfection, everything about the house and dinner must be ‘just right’, she is overwhelmed by the pressure, sees Mary ‘goofing off’ and it presses her buttons. Martha accuses Jesus of not caring and is angry with her sister for not supporting her performative project. In short, she is feeling vulnerable and stressed, she projects this stress onto the safe people in her life. Martha and Mary represent the tension in every human psyche. The quieter wisdom of hospitality, care, and self-assurance, the strident voice of public perception and the torturous insecurity we feel at being perceived to have fallen short. Martha is not the villain in this story, rather she personifies for us all our vulnerabilities, fear, and insecurity. Jesus’ response to Martha is gentle and empathic, yet also strong in boundaries. He will not be recruited into her anger and anxiety, rather he invites her to convert to the possibility of being enough just as she is. This is our invitation too, the Martha and the Mary held together in the reconciliation made possible by the expression of merciful truth.
Well, there is an idea of perfection in Jesus’ teaching and its as far from our performance pathologies as it is possible to get (thank God). Jesus tells his inner circle: ‘be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect’ (Matt 5:48). What he means is that to be and become fully human is to grow into the trajectory of perfect mercy. In other words, an irony, to be perfect is the opposite of demanding perfection from ourselves or others. To be perfect is to respond with empathy and kindness to our own brokenness and that of our neighbours. Strange ideas of perfection indeed.
A final word on this, taken from the Jungian psychoanalyst and spiritual writer, Thomas Moore, who tells us that our own inner Martha and Mary can become fruitful partners rather than binary antagonists:
One perhaps surprising source of potential soul in our work is failure. The dark cloud of failure that shadows our earnest efforts is to some extent an antidote for overly high expectations. Our ambition for success and perfection in work drives us on, while worries about failure keep us tied to the soul in work. When ideas of perfection dive downward into the lower regions of the soul, out of that gesture of incarnation comes human achievement. We may feel crushed by failure, but our lofty aims may need some spoiling if they are to play a creative role in human life. Perfection belongs to an imaginary world. According to traditional teaching, it is the life-embedded soul, not soaring spirit that defies humanity…
Failure is a mystery, not a problem.
… By appreciating failure with imagination, we reconnect it with success. Without the connection, work falls into grand narcissistic fantasies of success and dismal feelings of failure. But as a mystery, failure is not mine; it is an element in the work I am doing.
Care of the Soul, pp. 196-197.
A message from the Author
