Ignoring the Imperfect

I think ignoring the imperfect in one’s life is a mistake. Imperfect aspects of life are inevitable and undeniable. No matter how naive our conceptions of life may be, difficult situations arise. Life simply cannot remain paradisical.

Given this, it seems to be a natural consequence that the responsible course of action is to step up and deal with difficulty, rather than putting them off, mentally or actually. Dr. Peterson expresses in his book 12 Rules for Life (Chapter 10) how his experience as a clinical psychologist contributed to his belief that not confronting a problem is a significant mistake, and that even simply by not confronting such imperfection or undesired responsibility, one can incur a comparatively much larger burden waiting to be acknowledged.

Naive thinking may try to resist this truth. I certainly did during at least one instance several years ago (nearly 10 I think) from my childhood. To me, the moral of this memory has solidified my conviction that problems cannot be escaped merely by hoping and pretending they go away. (Evaluating how well I have responded to and addressed this conviction as reflected in my own actions, is also an important subject, and should be the subject of a future section).

Now, I was part of a math/reading tutoring program called Kumon. Part of Kumon’s teaching philosophy was requiring students to correct all mistakes, to maximize one’s learning on each respective task learned. Corrections frustrated me, and young as I was back then, I had developed a keen distaste for them akin to the repulsion any child in a pizza roll advertisement has for his green veggies.

At the time, it was summertime, and I had been making efforts to remove imperfections from life. I would going to Kumon early, as soon as it opened. sometimes earlier, so that the doorkeeper/receptionist Jan would have us wait outside and open the doors when he was set up. I remember the other kids who would also come early, and sometimes wished I were as cool as them, with their outspokenness, keychain around their neck, and gelled hairstyle. I believe that I was developing a desire for perfection. Around the same time (maybe a couple of years later), I had developed a strange compulsion to balance all objects I touched symmetrically between left and right hands in a chiasmatic fractal-like pattern (hard to explain in words). 

Things that had come in the way of my pristine world bothered me, as they upset the very foundation of the worldview I had developed, and problems and difficulties had no place within my life. Kumon corrections were among these nuisances; they were frustrating in nature, and perhaps it was the feeling of someone telling me that I was wrong on a problem (how shocking!) that I did not desire to tolerate. I cannot be sure why corrections didn’t make their way into the set of tasks I viewed as important. Perhaps I had wanted to excel at all things; perhaps I believed that mistakes and failure was a sign of incompetence; perhaps I simply wished to rid my life and experiences of anything but my own success. I cannot say for sure.

But what I can say is that my lack of recognition of corrections and disdain for the difficult task of completing corrections was enough to make me attempt to purge corrections from my life. I threw away, at least on one occasion, my remaining incomplete corrections into the trash can. My mom found out (likely from the sound of the outside dumpster closing), and that was not pleasant. I’d like to say that this experience along with other experiences, such as when I made the intention of cheating on my vocabulary test in middle school (and was busted and humiliated badly, by my parents, teachers, and friends, for the intent) contributed to my recognition of the value of imperfection of difficulty is not only important in life, but also what defines it and ascribes meaning to it.