perfectionism

A few years ago, while busy preparing to make a huge Easter dinner for my family, my kitchen faucet broke.  So that meant I wouldn’t have water in my kitchen to finish preparing the meal and for clean up.  What to do? Thankfully, I had been raised to believe there was always a way. You just need to get creative! We had to MacGyver it by attaching a garden hose with duct tape to the bathroom faucet which was right off the kitchen and then ran it into the kitchen sink so I could finish the rest of the meal prep.  The clean up was the messy bit – it took hours with all the running back forth between the bathroom and the kitchen.

I was watching one of those baking competitions on TV the other night, and while being interviewed during the episode, one of the contestants boasted about being a perfectionist.  She claimed that because she had such high standards and that nothing would do unless it was perfect, that made her a great baker. As it turned out, she got so flustered when things didn’t go her way that she barely finished and ended up presenting a dessert that was not something she could be proud of. She was eliminated from the competition.  You see, perfection is never attainable.  There will always be something you can pick apart if you really want to.  And as the quote above so beautiful illustrates, this poor contestant became so demoralized, that she was not even able to do her best, let alone get anywhere close to the standard she had set for herself.