Perfectionism and Giving Up

For this morning’s literature consumption, I immersed myself in the writings of President Henry B Eyring: Reflections of a Scientist.

Repetitive emphasis has been placed upon his mortal state of imperfections and flaws, and he rejoices in it. He reflects on the experiences of his life when he found such flaws in church leaders and found equal enjoyment and personal upliftment. It taught him that perfection is not a requirement of the Lord when it comes to engaging in His work and word.

I had read a few chapters by the time I arrived at my university. I walked to the main library’s lawn, where I found a bench to sit by a provided barbeque and a couple of trees.

Laying down to read, it sunk in just how many times Eyring surfaced the topic of imperfection – whether it is by my own perception or otherwise, it mattereth not to me – what matters is, it is that I realized it was worth pondering about at this time.

I rested my phone on my chest. Surely the low density but noticeable traffic would have a few here and there questioning the sanity of this man laying down by the lawn bench.

As I rested, I pondered on perfectionism. My thoughts sometimes found tangents of imagination, but I stirred them back as soon as I noticed.

As I thought, I was led to think about the tree right on my left. My makeshift pillow of a bag found my head rotating on it as I observed the tree. It was your standard primary school child’s drawing: the tree trunk extending upwards, its branching up beginning a few metres higher than the ground. Its leaves sprouting like fractal patterns to capture the sunlight – which on this day, was quite abundant to motivate one to stay in the shade on this morning.

I made this realization: the tree isn’t perfect. Its trunk is at an angle, its bark jagged and broken in some areas. The branches not equally distributed in the angles they leave from the trunk. The leaf distribution would not be perfect either, I would guess.

I made this observation – the tree is doing its job. The leaves are receiving the sunlight. The roots are soaking up the soil’s moisture. It provides shade to visitors by day.

Those who give up on God or their own ability to serve God may be like like a tree that retracts its branches and roots, doubtful of its own ability to take in sunlight and moisture. Now, which is more probable to receive the nourishment it needs – the tree with branches or a tree without?

I suppose we could doubt our ability to receive the right amount of light and moisture - too little or too much.

I guess God’s grace is in the growth, and in the providence of needed nourishments, but it is a choice of ours to not go fishing, so to speak.

Even with my imperfections, I can perform functions – however imperfect my performance may be. God’s grace will be in the results. He can bless me with success if He pleases, but I must do my part. We can work as a team.

How do I feel toward a team member in a university group, who dedicates less effort, enthusiasm and contribution than required? Why, I do my best to lift him up with encouragement and teamwork. I do not criticize – or at least I push away the temptation to the best I can. Why do some believe that God is not the same for us?

The improvement here for me is to be more admissive of my humanity and imperfection.

From President Eyring's book:

The photo was taken at about 9:57am – 3 minutes before my lecture starts. I had planned to publish it, but decided to stick to my principles of being a good student.

The lecture was on stroke and stroke recovery. One salient feature of the lecture for me were some statistics regarding stroke.

Stroke is a major disease where the brain receives damage due to something wrong with the blood flow to the brain – either blood bursts into the brain, or blood is blocked from reaching the brain.

Resulting symptoms include, but are not always any of aphasia (difficulty speaking), lack of bladder control, aphagia (difficulty swallowing), sight impairment, strange tactile sensations, involuntary pain, and most undesired of all, movement impairment. It is the loss of ability to walk, feed oneself, play sport, even sometimes wiping your own bottom after a toilet break that alters the lives of victims and their familis.

Victims of stroke were known to have a period of time of healing, after which they cannot heal anymore. This period was approximated to be 5 weeks.

However, some neuroscientists did not believe this, and looked into the methods and characteristics of rehabilitation services available for stroke victims. Varying among the characteristics were:
Six hours per week with rehab, most of that hour spent sitting down.
Lifestyle of victims include mostly being in bed, if not trying to transfer themselves to the bathroom or sitting up for eating.

Thus, there was a decrease of fitness and health over the duration due to the inability to perform physical tasks. Little improvement was found.

Also, the rehabilitation was long and difficult for the patients.

The observing neuroscientists decided to run a new rehabilitation program, which developed and improved over time. The general features included:
Rehabilitation of one hour, but only timing the amount of time spent active.
Wii-based movements working on coordination and fun activities.

As a result, a completely different result arose! Over the course of the victim’s post-stroke life, improvement (and only improvement) was found, even after 5 months and into the years. Stroke victims were found to regain so much of the lost physical abilities, and continue life progressing!

These results directly contradicted the previously accepted statistic of a five month limited period of healing.

Someone wisely said: “Insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”

So maybe you or someone you know is suffering from stagnation, lack of progress, a problem that just isn’t being solved. The simple solution is to try something new. We know a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb – we just need to find at least one that works.

Perfectionism is the goal.
Joy is in the journey to it.
The worth of perfection is in the journey as well as its attainment.
Attitude is more important than fact.
(References needed.)