Perfectionist doesn’t mean perfect. Far from it.

You always come up short, is all. You’re more or less miserable. You feel compelled to keep warding off, warding off the instinct to make things better. Besides driving yourself nuts, you drive everybody around you nuts.

As the husband of a certain Anna Schlonneger told her, “You have to put a lid on the perfectionism. Not pay fanatical attention to every slight kink.” But it was Birdie, Anna’s friend, who actually set her straight. Anna had asked Birdie over for supper. Making her usual apologetic noises, Anna was pulling from the cupboard her huckleberry pie with jellied bruise-blue blobs hanging off the sides. Birdie broke in. “Homemade!” she cried, palms pressed to her bosom in rapture. “Now that is what I call a treat to the eyes. I declare, I cannot for the life of me see why anybody pays for those perfect cardboard store pies.”

“Oh, but—” Right away, Anna recuperated. “Well!” Haughtily she scooted her dessert onto the table, the pan turned in such a way that Birdie could easily cut herself a piece from the worst-gobbed part.

So for anybody afflicted with compulsive self-criticism, what helps most, probably, is concluding that their mess-ups—everybody else’s mess-ups, too—can bring inestimable pleasure.

One exception is the mess—um, splotches—left behind by stinkbugs. Perfectly heinous.


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