Mr A’s neighbors and co-workers know and view him as the perfect and model husband. He exudes a kind of gentleness that is rare amongst men in his community. No one has found terrible behaviours like domestic violence and verbal abuse in him.
Tinah is a star student; the kind of student that almost never gets in trouble and gets out of trouble so fast that it’s hard to believe she was ever in it, the one that teachers love and adore. The model student. The student that everyone wants to befriend and be like. The yardstick for other students and children.
What is common to these two? SEEMING PERFECTION. No one is perfect, there is no doubt about that. However, in the cases of Mr. A and Sharon, there seems to be a level of attained perfection. What makes them seem relatively perfect? The simple answer to that question is that when they are “weighed” in comparison to their equals and peers, their behaviours put their peers off the weighing scale, displacing them off any trace of perfection. But what if it is because no one has tested them beyond limits?
What Has Changed?
What if these ostensibly perfect people have just not been intensely irritated? What if they have never shown their “true-colors”, so to speak? What if they had always suppressed how they felt? What if they are given the chance to unveil and unmask all their thoughts and feelings.
What if one day, Mr A starts to act as if there is another creature in his body. What if he starts raging and acting as if a monster in him has come out against its will? What if he starts manifesting traits that makes him hardly recognizable?
What if Tinah gets to school one day and everyone starts to notice a shift in her attitude. Curt greetings,a fake smile, brusque replies, a saddened demeanor. What if her eyes starts to burn with rage, like fire that suddenly gets fuelled? What if she starts reacting aggressively to everything like a can of soda shaken repeatedly and suddenly popped open. What if no one can pacify her anymore and she moves quickly from being a model student to being a black sheep?
The Cause of a Quick Change?
What has changed in these two individuals? What causes the switch in people’s known behaviors? Unexpected negative events and situations. They become exposed to situations that calls for immediate reaction. Their long surpressed emotions brings out the long tamed beast in them. Before such events, they have had to show reactions that were far from being human, almost angelic.
The disaster that is an inhumane change in their attitudes is a result of always acting all prim and proper and supressing all emotions; anger, pain, sadness and hurt amongst others. It can also be a result of being extreme perfectionists, and beating themselves up because of small mistakes. We should view making errors in what we do and say as normal. This is what makes us humans.
Another reason for the seemingly perfect lifestyles of many is comparison. Some people are from families where comparison is the order of the day, and they have to live to a set expectation or surpass it. It could also be because many have raised the bars they have set for themselves too high that any attempt at a miss is not an option for them.
We can say in all cases that we should carefully evaluate viewing a person as perfect or “worshipping” perfection. There is no perfection, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong in trying to attain perfect results in different spheres of life, there should be a balance. There should be allowance for errors, allowance for falling and failure. It is also important that everyone keeps in mind that attaining perfection in itself is not a one-day event. Just as every other thing takes time, organization and results take time and require patience.
Conclusion
In conclusion, seeming perfection is just as its name implies. All that “perfectionists” ‘need’ sometimes is something so strong and so personal that it ticks them off their well measured scale of perfection. An event in their life that is beyond all the plans they’ve drawn in their heads for how everything in every second of the day is supposed to go is enough to bring out the bad and ugly and opposing side of perfection.
Is perfection an illusion? The simple answer to that is that no one can attain complete perfection at all times.
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