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In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune, I was asked about the desirability of striving for perfection. Do you have to be the perfect mom, perfect employee, spouse, and so forth?
My response was that there is no such thing as perfection in this imperfecti world and that when you demand that you attain it, you are in for a life of frustration and high-level stress. A large part of this stress, however, is the guilt that so many people experience when they try not to demand perfection.
In my new book on dutiful worrying, I call this guilt-driven demandingness dutiful perfectionism. Guilt is always a response to a perception of having violated a moral principle; so this type of perfectionism is always a perceived moral demand to be perfect. You think you have a moral duty to be perfect, so you tell yourself that you must do everything, or at least some things, perfectly. You also tell yourself that you must never fail because otherwise you will be a bad person.
So, you feel guilty if you don't bust your gut to be perfect. "I must never let my children down." "I must never let anything bad happen." "I must always do the right thing." "I must always be in control." "I must always do my best." All of these and other "musts" imposing perfectionistic demands on oneself are typically perceived as moral duties or requirements such that you think your failure to comply with them would reflect poorly on what kind of a person you are. This, in turn, keeps you feeling guilty when you think you haven't fulfilled your duty. So you blame, condemn, and damn yourself for being less than perfect. However, as Aristotle would confirm, being good is not the same thing as being perfect. More exactly, attaining virtue involves practice; but practice never truly makes perfect because we always can do better.
But why isn't better good enough? Is the inability to be perfect truly something to decry? Is perfection really even a good thing in the first place?
Consider what the great American philosopher, William James, said about a perfect world:
"Freedom in a world already perfect could only mean freedom to be worse, and who could be so insane as to wish that?...Surely the only possibility that one can rationally claim is the possibility that things may be better."
In other words, in a perfect world we would not have the freedom to achieve anything positive because everything positive would have already been achieved. How boring is that! But in an imperfect world, there is always the possibility of making things better, which can make things interesting.
So, while perfection is not a reasonable possibility, making things better is. This doesn't mean that things must always be better. Here, the trick is not to get caught in demanding perfection about making things better. Instead, you can realistically assess the probabilities of things being better, and act according to these probabilities.
Probability (as distinct from certainty) and betterment (as distinct from perfection) go hand in hand. Instead of demanding certainty about finding perfect solutions to your problems, seek to increase the probability of making things better. Probability yields no money-back guarantee; nor does betterment mean that you won't confront obstacles in life. But that is exactly what makes life exciting and challenging!
For more on dutiful perfectionism and why it is a bad idea, see my book on The Dutiful Worrier: How to Stop Compulsive Worry Without Feeling Guilty.
