One of my delights as a father of young children was driving my daughters to school and various activities. Sometimes there was silence. More typically, there was banter and commentary. It was never dull.
Once, when one of the girls was only seven or eight, she took issue with me on the topic of perfection. “It’s not good to want to be perfect,” she announced from the back seat. Aspiring to be the dutiful parent, I tried to explore the difference between the goal of perfection versus its achievement. My young daughter would have none of it. “No one can be perfect, Dad,” she stated firmly. “It’s not good to try.”
My daughter’s declaration stuck with me. She was not a child who was lazy, indifferent, or unengaged. At seven, this girl participated in things. She had strong opinions. So from whence did this surprising conviction arise? Was she indirectly telling me, in the only way that a young child could, that my expectations of other people – of her, or perhaps even of myself – were too high?
We didn’t discuss the topic further, at the time or since. But the comment stayed with me, buried somewhere inside my memories, recently resurfacing as something of substance I’ve encountered in my life, a lesson unrealized.
The little whippersnapper was right.
I’ve lived my life as a pretty goal-oriented person. Both my upbringing and personality shaped a strong sense of potential for the world and specifically of my capability to achieve my own place in it. You can accomplish anything, if you set your mind to it. Over decades, I’ve repeated that mantra often, leaning on it when a seemingly insurmountable challenge lay before me as well as when I needed an excuse to either not engage in something or in fact to fail. I could do something, if I really wanted to. Some things some times were just not important. They were simply not goals.
And so I’ve trudged through almost 60 years of life, accomplishing some goals, failing at others, and deciding not to try to succeed at still more. I’ve learned to see much of what I do as success or failure from the perspective of task and objective. This trait has served me well – at least in some ways. It has, however, left me unfulfilled in others.
Goals are useful. They motivate us, get us out of bed in the morning, lead us into and through challenging circumstances and situations. Goals bring certain successes, especially in careers and vocations. And yet they are limited. Of greater importance, as we age, it becomes clear than they are limiting.
Have I had a goal to be perfect? ‘Definitely not’ is my first answer. ‘I don’t think so’ is the honest next. Because, in all truth, I have kept wanting to improve myself, like some rough-edged sculpture, smoothing corners, burnishing, polishing my traits and strengths in search of still unrevealed or soon-to-be glistening ability. There are diamonds in there, I know it. I just need to extract them from the mess of discardable rubble.
But is the drab rubble just as much me as the sparking gems I’d prefer that you see? Is self-discovery less excavation, less looking within, and more a process of revelation, more a learning to release and reach out?
We aren’t perfect, none of us. Still, we sense the perfect, in an odd and wondrous way, through our imperfections. We also experience the majestic – something related to the perfect – when we embody the essence of acceptance, when we see ourselves as part of the other, when we focus less on personal achievement and more on interpersonal awareness.
I do, therefore I become. That is the voice of tomorrow. Of separation. Of striving.
I am, therefore I can be. That is the voice of today. Of communion. Of being.
Maybe that was the message I heard from the back seat of the car so many years ago. My 7 year-old was expressing the very heart of being.