"Hi, this is Frank C[inaudible] and - "
we decided that we don't need an intern, thanks for playing, maybe next year
"I just want to let you know about what you'll be doing your first day."
"Dear Miss R, we would like to remind you that - "
your grades suck and so do you and so you don't deserve any of this and this is obviously a cruel cruel joke
"you will need to bring your documents for your I9 form when you come in."
"Hi, just want to give you an update - "
the position has been terminated again and you will again have to drudge through another useless semester
"We finished your background check and we need you to check in to the new hire portal ASAP, m'kay?"
There's this thing bouncing around on the Internet called the Impostor Syndrome. The big idea is that extremely competent people feel like they don't deserve to be where they are, that they are just faking, that at any moment someone who is actually competent will figure them all out and "expose" them. This fear of being "found out" tends to lead to a state of constant anxiety, which can impede competence, which leads to more fear. I first came across this idea in an article about why there aren't more girls in engineering - females are apparently more prone to this kind of self-competence-killing mental spiral.
I've never thought I was good enough - even when I was at the top of my game, acing classes and taking names, there was some small part of me that knew I was doing something wrong - I was outside of the paradigm of the ideal popular athletic smart girl that I thought was the goal - but, as that goal is pretty much unobtainable by mortals, it made me kinda miserable all the time.
And at some point, because of it, I decided to stop caring - because if I can't be perfect, then what's the point of trying, way?
One of the things I'm working on is realizing that I am enough - I don't have to check off all the boxes of the "perfect person" checklist, I am allowed to screw up, and that I am more competent than I seem to be. It's also realizing that everyone else is kinda faking it, too. Part of my challenge this year is to realize that imperfection is okay, that I don't have to be everything to every one, and that I can fall down every once in a while, and I can still get back up.
And if nothing else, I have to remember that it's not falling if you never hit the floor - it's flying.
You should never stop caring because you can't be perfect...because as the old saying goes, NOBODY is perfect.
ReplyDeleteYou should maybe read up on the Japanese art of Wabi-sabi (the art of imperfection) -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
"According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi can be defined as "the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West."
Whereas Andrew Juniper notes that "[i]f an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi."
For Richard Powell, "[w]abi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."
Ironically, there is a kind of perfection in imperfection.
Being afraid of doing or making something because you fear it won't turn out to be perfect is a fear that will never motivate you to do anything in a world where no one can be perfect.
Sure, aim for perfection, but realize that you will never attain it.
Take a listen to the Oprah "Super-soul" interviews at her podcast site and you will hear a lot of guests (Alanis Morissette for instance), including Oprah talk about this "impostor syndrome".
The link to the Oprah podcasts are here -
http://www.supersoul.tv/