April’s Soul Matters spiritual theme is Awakening. This Sunday, Rev. Peter Friedrichs reprises a sermon that reflects on our drive toward perfectionism, the challenges that presents, and how we might learn to live with the idea of “good enough.”
Please read the sermon below or watch the complete service video by clicking here!
Last night Irene and I attended an auction dinner at the home of two church members. Four couples – all vaccinated and boosted – seated around the dining room table, eating scrumptious food and engaging in delightful conversation. It was all so ordinary and, at the same time, it was rather miraculous. I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here and say that we’ve entered something of a post-pandemic period. I know, I know. I hope I don’t jinx it, and I know there’s another variant out there. But, look: we’re gathering here in person in the sanctuary. We’re resuming in-person fellowship time after the service, even though it’s outdoors and we aren’t yet serving coffee. Auction dinners without masks are happening. Like butterflies emerging from our chrysalis, it feels like we’re slowly emerging from our cocoons of the past two years. And from this early post-pandemic perspective, I can already say that I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that there are certain things I can’t do without. Like high-speed internet and a subscription to Amazon Prime. On a more serious note, I’ve learned that I can make do with less. That a simpler life is a satisfying life. I’ve learned that Irene and I can share the same space 24/7/365 and be rather happy, which is good as I head toward retirement. But I’ve also learned that I crave interaction with others as well. Whether it’s sitting in a coffee shop with a friend or attending a concert or a play, I realize that those connections help to expand my universe and my sense of myself.
There’s one pre-pandemic habit I’ve found hard to break, and maybe you have as well. Despite the constant reminders the past couple years have thrown in my face, I find myself still striving for perfection. To be the best I can possibly be. You’d think that the pandemic, with all its demands for improvising and all its uncertainties would have broken me of this curse. But even when I’ve had to experiment and, as the saying goes, “build the airplane while we’re flying it,” I’ve found myself striving to build the best, most perfect airplane I can. Does any of this resonate with you?
Even in the face of an unprecedented, global pandemic, many of us want to be, or at least be seen to be, perfect. We all want to be, and we want our children to be, straight A students, both in school and in life. We strive for perfection, even though we know that it’s ultimately unattainable. From an early age we were encouraged to try harder, study longer, focus more. To live up to our potential. And each step of the way we’re graded. Whether it’s with a letter grade, or through acceptance to college, or by getting the job we seek or the raise we need, by being able to afford the house we want or that shiny new convertible, our performance in life is constantly being evaluated. Do we measure up? And if you’re like me, your harshest critic is the one you never escape, the one that’s inside of you.
This desire for perfection is, of course, perpetuated by our popular culture. We are led to believe that we can be perfect. We are bombarded with images of perfect homes surrounded by weedless lawns, across which cavort beautiful children with perfect teeth and purebred dogs. In their pursuit of the perfect body, Americans spend nearly 50 billion – that’s “billion” with a “b” – fifty billion dollars a year on cosmetic procedures. Botox injections, liposuction, face lifts. Let me put that in some perspective: the amount Americans spend on procedures like having their noses fixed and unwanted hair removed each year is more than the gross domestic product of some sub-Saharan African countries. The pandemic hasn’t helped, either. By working from home, the boundaries between our work and our personal time has been blurred or even completely erased. The first thing many of us do when we wake up in the morning and the last thing we do before we go to bed is to check our phones for messages.
It’s hard to say where this striving for perfection comes from. Even if we blame our parents, as we often do, they likely got it from somewhere themselves. I’m inclined to say that it goes back to our foundations in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the first chapter of Genesis, after God has formed the earth, the seas and the land, after he has populated it with animals of all kind, “God said ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 26). If we are created in the image of God, and God is all-knowing and perfect, aren’t we thus called to be perfect ourselves? Between these religious values and our cultural norms, our perfectionism is, in some very real sense, hard-wired into our very beings.
Our Unitarian tradition even supports our drive for perfection. The great Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing was a staunch proponent of the perfectibility of humankind. It was Channing who said “Our supreme good is the perfection of our being… Nothing can make us truly happy but our perfection.”
I would submit to you that this belief in the perfectability, if not the perfection, of humankind is perhaps the most glaring imperfection of our Unitarian Universalist faith, as well as our modern American culture. And it is a disease that infects every part of our lives. Our pursuit of perfection is insidious. Perfectionism puts a tremendous strain on our systems. It puts us in a constant state of fear. Fear of not measuring up to our own ideals or those we suppose others place on us. Like a juggler straining to keep 4, 5, 6 balls in the air lest they all come crashing down, we strive to do more, to do better, to do faster. And in our doing, we deny our being. We conceal ourselves behind our tasks and we identify ourselves by our outcomes.
The author Kathleen Norris puts it this way:
Perfectionism is one of the scariest words I know. It is a serious psychological affliction that makes people too timid to take necessary risks, and causes them to suffer when, although they’ve done the best they can, their efforts fall short of some imaginary and usually unattainable standard. Internally, it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.
Perfectionism has another insidious effect. When we expect perfection from ourselves, we tend to expect it from those around us. And when others don’t measure up to our standards of perfection, we devalue, degrade and perhaps even dispose of them. Our children don’t behave as we think they should, so we punish them. Our partner doesn’t live up to the ideal we had when first we met, so we divorce them. Our boss doesn’t have the good sense to recognize how great we are, so we quit. Our pursuit of perfection in others can become a storm cloud that blocks out the sun and casts a shadow across all that we see.
We know in our hearts that Lake Wobegon is a fictional town, yet we still measure ourselves against this standard where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. And at the same time, we know in our hearts that, no matter how well-intentioned we may be, no matter how we may have convinced ourselves that we can approach some ideation of perfection if only we work a little harder, exercise a little more, or drive our kids to yet one more activity, we will never reach that particular promised land. So, I’m here today to release us all from the tyranny of perfectionism. I’m here to proclaim that “good enough” is good enough to get us through.
Now, if that simple declaration isn’t good enough for you, if it doesn’t provide the adequate inspiration to try and overcome our collective perfectionism, let me give you some more motivation. Perfectionism – the drive to hold ourselves and others up to unreasonable, unachievable standards of achievement – has been identified as one of the characteristics of white supremacy culture. Perfectionism is a result of privilege and power. The dominant white culture sets the expectations and then uses the so-called “failure” to achieve them to critique and oppress those who don’t measure up. So, if we want to be a people who actively engage in dismantling racism, we have a moral and social obligation to let go of this drive toward perfection, both in ourselves and in others.
I thought about ending this sermon on that note. That’s good enough, isn’t it? But then I got worried that some of you wouldn’t be satisfied to hear that the message of my sermon – that “good enough is good enough” – is a simple quip that you might find printed on a coffee mug. So, in my pursuit to make this sermon “good enough” for everyone, I’d like to offer you something more. While preparing to write this sermon I came across an Eastern outlook on perfectionism that I thought was enlightening. My colleague Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley tells of a Japanese phrase that he has learned: “Wabi Sabi.” Although the phrase is difficult to translate into English, Nate explains that “Wabi Sabi” is the recognition of “the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete.” Wabi Sabi, he says, describes our lives perfectly. Imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, but nonetheless beautiful. Wabi Sabi. Our spiritual challenge, I think, is to rest in Wabi Sabi. To trust in Wabi Sabi. To live in Wabi Sabi. We must begin to recognize when we are good enough, when we have done enough, when we have achieved enough, no matter how far it is from the ideal we or others set for ourselves. And to find contentment, satisfaction and beauty in that place. So today I offer Wabi Sabi as my gift to you.
I would like to close with a story from my past, a moment of Wabi Sabi, if you will. More than 20 years ago, Irene and I were walking on the beach in Florida. These were dark days, as we both struggled to hold on through the depression I was suffering through. My condition had clouded my view of my life, and I was dissatisfied with everything and everyone around me. My memory is that we were walking separately on the beach, each lost in our own thoughts. Irene was some distance ahead of me, and I was intently focused on the sand at my feet. Every once in a while I would stop and reach down to pick up a shell that caught my eye. Time and again I would toss each shell back into the ocean. Irene stopped up ahead, and must have been watching me, because I caught up to her and she asked what I was doing. I told her, “I’m looking for the perfect shell.” In a moment of stunning clarity, she said to me simply, “You know, all the time you’re searching for the perfect shell you’re missing out on the beauty that’s all around you.”
So today, let us remember to see the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent and the incomplete. This day, and every day, I wish you the peace of Wabi Sabi. Blessed Be and Amen.
Closing Words by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Do we go into the garden wishing that the pansies were taller than the daffodils, or thinking that the roses would be fine if only they didn’t have thorns? Do we go into a kindergarten and wish that the children would fit into some model of perfection we hold, or can we see that variety makes the beauty of gardens and humans, that our spiritual task is not to make perfection but to awaken to the perfection around us.”