It's hard to admit we have flaws. Yearning for perfection is a natural human trait. And yet, to our great dismay, we are bound to discover that our imperfections are actually the most human thing about us. To deny them is to deny our own humanity - our freedom to choose, our ability to grow, our desire to rise above, do better, be more. I suspect imperfection is the reason for our very existence.
Still, I sit across from one of my favorite people in the world - my therapist - and demand to know why I continue to screw up. Why do I feel so weak? Why am I such a loser? WHY? I politely ask her to please fix me, make me perfect, because I'm tired of spinning my wheels. I mean, that's her job, right?
Wrong. Once again, my human-ness is showing.
I'm now 33 weeks pregnant with an already-loved baby boy who will be called Malachi, Micah or Gideon. And when he arrives we will go through the checklist: ten fingers, ten toes, eyes that see, ears that hear, lungs that work overtime to scream when the little man is cold or hungry or uncomfortable or even just lonely. If he has all those wonderful working parts that make up a human, we will declare him Perfect. It's only natural. It starts with the doctor. "It's a boy, and he's just perfect!" Then Brett will look at me, eyes all teary after meeting his child for the first time and say "He's beautiful. He's absolutely perfect." And those who come to ooo and awe over our sweet babe will offer - "Oh my, isn't he just the sweetest, most perfect little thing!"
But the truth is, he won't be. He won't be perfect, even at the start. Why? Because he is human, and one of the strongest things that defines us as such is our imperfections. Otherwise, we'd be SuperHuman and a fleet of poorly-made Marvel movies clearly demonstrate that even that gig isn't all it's cracked up to be. Spiderman, WonderWoman, Professor Xavier - they've all got their weaknesses.
So right from the start this little one will echo my lament, "why must I be so flawed?" - and within the first few years of his tiny existence will naturally enter into the longest and greatest struggle of his life; The Quest For Perfection. Which presents a daunting parental task: how to teach a child to accept their own humanness - that they will never, in this lifetime, obtain perfection - while encouraging them nonetheless to strive for progress it a nurturing, practical way?
Jude, my oldest, age 8, is already so unbearably hard on himself that when he makes a mistake I rarely get to speak before he launches into merciless verbal floggings. More often than not I find myself interrupting the self-punishment solely to ease him off the edge. "You made a mistake, bud. That's called "being human" and it's perfectly normal. What matters is how you fix it. When we feel guilt after screwing up we can either let it eat us up and weigh us down or we can let it motivate us to put things right. Fess up and apologize - genuinely, honestly. Fix it as best you can. Think about what you can do differently next time and then move on. That shows what kind of metal you're truly made of. That's how you grow."
Merrick, currently my youngest (age five), is the hardcore opposite. If he's in a bad mood for some inexplicable reason - his oatmeal too hot or cold, his comfy pants in the wash, he sleeps on a pea, whatever - he'll kung-fu anyone unfortunate enough to wander past him. No amount of lecturing, time-outing, loss-of-privileging, positive-behavior-reinforcing or even scary-faced-threatening can convince this kid that smacking the crap out of people is not cool.
In our discussions thus far I have gathered that Mer doesn't consider this violent attribute to be a flaw. Rather, it gets him swift results and, as the littlest in our family, it is the most direct route to fulfilling his needs. Or so he thinks. But he's not seeing the undesirable consequences that come along with those results. Sadly, I can relate.
Having grown up in a home where imperfections were met with condemnation and rage, lying became my primary source of survival from an early age. I clung to this coping mechanism long after it ceased to serve me because it had become my way of life. As an adult, I turned a blind eye to the many undesirable consequences that came along with the results I thought I was getting. I could not see my flaw. Eventually, my dishonesty threatened to destroy the most important things in my life and I realized that I'd been slowly sinking myself all along. I was in a boat full of holes and bailing with a spoon.
I see Merrick in a similar boat: surrounded by sharks, water level rising, rising, rising - and he just keeps bailing one spoonful at a time. He wants his siblings to pay attention to him so badly that he's lashing out in the one way they can't ignore. This gets him his immediate intended results but ensures that they will like him less and less in the future. It's a vicious cycle which inevitably ends underwater, all the while still bailing, bailing, bailing.
My challenge here is different than with Jude. I'm trying to help Merrick see that his flawed thinking is causing flawed actions - he is "being human". He has an imperfection and until he sees it for what it is, he's stuck bailing. It's not exactly a parenting moment I relish. But I recognize that (when done gently) this is a form of love - of mercy, really. Because the sooner he understands this the sooner he is freed from the burden of pursuing perfection and empowered to seek learning and progress. Like all of us, he will never be perfect and that's ok. I want to enable him to accept and love himself as-is, looking for opportunities to grow while still retaining the inner strength to pick himself back up again when his own imperfections knock him down.
Summed up, its an impressive task that looks something like this: Know your weaknesses, do your best to improve, put things right when you make mistakes, then let go and move on. All the while love, love, love who you truly are and where you're truly at. Easy peasy, right?
Ugh. Being Human. Let's all agree that it sucks, right? But boy, when we embrace it we also unlock the potential gifts our humanness holds in store for us - freedom to choose, ability to change, to rise above, to do better, to be more - and we discover a beautiful metamorphosis of the soul in the most unlikely places: Imperfection. And we realize that being human, while hard, is also very, very sweet.
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