I struggle to fix the imperfection in myself and world around me

By David McElroy · January 10, 2021

I’ve always believed it was my job to fix the world. To make everything perfect.

I never actually said that. I didn’t even consciously think it. But I walked through the world feeling a sort of panic — a desperation to fix things — that most people never experience.

Looking back, it’s obvious now where that fear came from. As I was growing up, my narcissistic father held me responsible for being perfect. I was punished for any deviation from what he thought was right and good. And he constantly judged everybody and everything around me.

Behind their backs, he ridiculed people who did things incorrectly. If he saw a public mistake — a timing error on a live television show or a typo in a newspaper, for instance — he used to tell me that someone must have been fired for the mistake. And I believed him.

I’m still afraid of my own imperfection. I still feel panic when I see others’ mistakes. After all these years, there’s still a nagging feeling inside that I have to fix everything — or else I’ll be punished.

I read something a few minutes ago that suggested an affirmation for me to try. It said, “I now affirm that life is good and unfolding in miraculous ways.” I actually felt myself shudder when I read the line — and I realized just how off-kilter my reaction is.

I found myself feeling that old fear. The world is imperfect. Messed up. Wrong. Filled with mistakes. And everything is going to fall apart if I don’t fix things. What’s more, I’m a bad person — deserving of punishment — if I don’t point out all the errors and show others how they can fix themselves.

I consciously realize how ridiculous this is. I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I won’t even have a firm idea of what “perfect” should be. I know that a lot of what I believe is wrong. I realize that some of my judgement about what’s wrong — and what’s imperfect — about other people and in the rest of the world is completely wrong.

But on an emotional level, that makes me panic. I have to point out the imperfection around me. The idiocy. The mistaken beliefs. The poor reasoning. The dishonesty. The world is filled with these things. Lots of them are obvious to me. And I have the panicky feeling that I’m going to be in trouble if I don’t somehow fix everybody and everything.

It’s been 10 days since I stopped posting on Facebook. I still have times when I suddenly think of something I’d like to post there. I might have an interesting thought to share or maybe I’ve observed something funny. It feels strange not to have an outlet for those tiny thoughts which were Facebook posts but aren’t long enough to be worth articles here. But that’s not the biggest change I’ve noticed.

I’m not feeling the constant need to explain what others are getting wrong. I’m not reading the cacophony of dumb opinions and wrong assertions and confused reasoning. I’m not muttering under my breath about how stupid this person is or feeling frustrated that someone else is repeating irrational conclusions.

Staying away from Facebook — and from most other forms of social media — keeps me from seeing so much of the imperfection in the world that I’ve felt driven to fix. And it’s allowing me to spend more time with my own thoughts and feelings and errors and misperceptions.

More and more, I’m shutting out what I perceive as wrong with the world — whether I’m right or not — and it’s allowing me to focus once again on what I can actually do in my own life instead.

Those who know me best already understand that I’m held back by my fear of not being perfect at whatever I do. I’m afraid to write the scripts that I want to write, because they won’t be good enough. I’m afraid to make the short films that I’ve been struggling to make — much less the feature — because I fear the work wouldn’t be perfect. I’m afraid of people seeing just how imperfect I am.

Nobody expects me to be perfect except me. I know that. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to pretend to be perfect. It doesn’t stop me from beating myself up every time I make any error. It doesn’t stop me from being angry and upset with myself about everything I publish for the world to see.

That’s especially true of my photos. Every time I publish something — even if it’s just to one of my Instagram accounts — I look at the work afterward and obsess about what’s wrong with it. I ran across the photo above — which I took last spring — earlier this evening, and I started beating myself up about all that’s wrong with it.

I live with that sort of obsessive self-criticism all the time. And I’m never going to live up to my natural talent and creative passions until I can get over this need to be perfect.

I can make some pretty nice things. Sometimes. When I’m not so terrified that I’m going to be punished for not being perfect.

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Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

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