A thing or two.

Maybe this one could better have started with my notes on perfectionism but those will only mislead you for now. I want to point you home because I also want you to stay.

I was adressing a small crowd recently and I called out to guys who played football when they were growing up. Almost my entire group raised their hands. They must have all stemed from communities- packaged with ideologies and ways of life that give us an identity. Even those can be shared across societies which are bigger and more inclusive.

So remember those days when you kicked the ball and it got stuck up a tree. It usually would disrupt the game. You tried to see it from the bottom but you could only find it one way: by climbing that tree.You knew that if you got up there, even if you failed to find that ball the advantage of shaking the branches would be in your hands. Problem solved.Eventually you found a way to get to the top, found the ball but only to realize the world has more problems than getting the ball. You know! like coming back down😂.

Somehow you knew going up was the only way to finding your solutions even without asking for help or giving up. After all life teaches us this concept through scarcity of options.

So I asked my crowd to picture their lives with those goals they have as one big tree full of branches. We all agreed that the realization of those goals comes if we keep moving till we rise above the branches we can see.

Sometimes life would send little but tough problems that required us to find this one stupid thing. This thing always managed to become something else. But that is what brings the thrill alot of times for that matter. The satisfaction of getting solutions of something that keeps getting bigger and bigger each time. Each time evading its obliteration and keeping us on its leash of exellence for the rest of our lives. This keep-moving collective ideology is what brings me to the notes we were talking about.

Wikipedia says ;

Perfectionism in psychology is a personality trait characterised by a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting high perfomance standards, accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations. It is best conceptualized as a multidimensional characteristic, as psychologists agree that there are many positive and negative aspects……By contrast, adaptive perfectionism can motivate people to reach their goals and to derive pleasure from doing so.

Consolation, right?

Some talk of standing still, focusing on the present and eventually you will get to the top but its still the same thing. Seems like a big philosophy with many sister vocabularies and nicknames. Some with chapter names and numbers too.That its all a big stream and we all know where all these streams meet and end. Three words; Colourful(sometimes pale), endless, oblivion. Perhaps you even know what it feels like or appears like when you go introspecting into that side of this big mystery coin that we’ve named life. I am not suggesting that its totally a pointless existence but the leaflet we borrow our beliefs from pretty much suggests so.

If we do that, it threatens the balance or whatever it is that things do to put us in place. An ownership disownership kind of an undoing castle that keeps us busy all our lives. Maybe this feeble balance structure is what places us at the lowest on the ranking of all beings just above animals that we consider brainless and look down upon with heavy contempt. So, what if higher beings look down upon us with this same natural superiority and that all we know is simple and pointless. That its all basic and flows into a larger collecting tub that is vast and still. Means then we are truly vulnerable beings who are open to manipulation from a point of greater understanding.

But the only way we’ve known is up so all that we hold is hope. Hope that this nothingness we are being flown into holds the ultimate freedom. We’ve collected ourselves into groups, crafted beliefs and codes then came up with little vocabularies for these groups. Remember the relatives I mentioned?

They even have a grandson.

The superiority complex. This is easily seen as a blanket or mask for personal feelings of inferiority. This is the dominating guy that presents themselves as superior to others to cover up for his/her own inadequacy within. The trick that ego plays in place of the vacuum. Maybe that is why significance is so greatly sought after in society. Who-is-better-than-who really is a big thing in this version of life.

The truth is that when you are out there seeking ideals you end up not realizing how much captivity you put yourself in. As a result you will often find yourself holding other people hostage to your own ideals in a world of shortcomings.

I could go on and on but the point is that perfectionism really doesn’t exist. It is a bottomless pit that keeps you going without ever really getting somewhere. Nonetheless, you use it opportinistically and we create a world of opportunist together in a big stream where the movement seems to bring together all perfect synchronicities to make one big downstream movement. We can however choose to be better than perfect and rise above the critic. Those standards will never come to life. There is always room for better ‘perfection’ – if thats even the perfect grammar.

You can check out your score and learn how to rise above the critic here; Better Than Perfect Quiz

We are done here. See you next time.

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