Against Perfection

Life is not perfect.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Perfection is a deadly trap that prevents us from progress. The allure of perfection provides the coward with the cover he needs to explain away his failures. Perfection does not exist in reality. The perfect life does not exist. The perfect job does not exist. The perfect marriage does not exist. The perfect family does not exist. The perfect ____ does not exist. It is a comforting fiction to embrace the idea that perfection exists, as it allows you to escape from reality and it enables you to live in a state of constant ingratitude and dissatisfaction. It is impossible for anyone to be happy if they are always comparing their current existence to a theoretical perfect one.
We want everything to be perfect. That desire is the most basic desire for all of humanity. It is at the core of our DNA, a relic of our ancestral home in Eden, where life truly was perfect. There is still some small part of our spirit, soul, or body that remembers or pretends to remember what that was like. In our poor fallen world the gravitational pull of the perfect is ever present, because we are so often reminded of how imperfect our world can be.
Life isn’t perfect. Your life will never be perfect. Once you embrace that, you can make your life better. Your life cannot be perfect, but it can be better than it currently is. Trading in the idea of some future perfection for the idea of constant improvement is the first step in taking action. We like the idea of the future perfect because it allows us to delay action until we find the perfect plan—always tinkering with what we will do someday rather than focusing on what we are doing today. We think that the perfect plan will be a silver bullet and will instantly solve all of our problems. We would rather waste our lives away waiting for that plan to be revealed to us than embark on our current, less perfect plan.
In a world where the perfect is the goal, everything else is complete failure. Because our world is not perfect, everything is a complete failure (according to that worldview). Because your life is not perfect, you view yourself as a complete failure. Because your job is not perfect, you view yourself as having failed in your career. Because your wife or girlfriend is not perfect, you view yourself as having failed in the most primal calling—be fruitful and multiple. The first step in freeing yourself from the burden of perfection and the constant feeling of failure is to recognize that the perfect does not exist. Period. It has never existed and it will never exist. There is no point in looking for what is not there to be found.
The low status man likes to escape to the idea of a perfect future. The low status man is all too painfully aware of his current failings and all too aware of the successes of others. Because the low status man believes that there is a perfect future somewhere out there, nestled between the rainbows and the unicorns and the super hot bisexual gaming girls, the low status man also believes that other people, his betters, are living that perfect life right now. That is the source of his hatred of high status men. He believes that they are living the perfect life that he deserves to life. The well-adjusted man, the man that lives in reality, understands that because the perfect does not exist, no one is living a perfect live. Yes, there are many who are living a better life than you, but their lives aren’t perfect. Making your peace with your current lot in life is the only way to improve it.
Rejecting the false promise of the perfect enables you to enjoy life as it actually is. You can enjoy your job without noticing every way in which it is not perfect. And if you take that attitude to your work, more often than not you will find your work not only more enjoyable, but more profitable. The same attitude will work in any aspect of your life. Once you embrace this, you will start to find more joy and contentment more of your life. Yes, it may not be perfect, but it might be pretty good right now. You have put too much of your life on hold waiting for the perfect thing to happen. Don’t wait any longer.