If it's never enough, it's always enough
Flipping perfectionism on its head
Sometimes I have an idea for an article or an essay and I think: well, that’s interesting, but it’s probably just a tweet. Everything there is to say about it is basically in the sentence-long idea itself. One such notion struck me recently, and initially I waved it away: if it’s never enough, it’s always enough.
Because I’m in therapy though, and I journal regularly, and have a crippling self-awareness about the cyclical ways in which I can undermine my own pursuit of happiness, this is a phrase that one way or another keeps popping into my head. It’s relevant to pretty much everything that matters to me as a human being: my relationships, my professional life, my creative pursuits, etc. It’s also very much relevant to things that “matter less” and fall squarely in the material realm: the apartment I live in, the furniture inside it, the clothes I wear, the technology I use, on and on. Stuff, basically. Things to obsess over.
Obsessing. This is what I do. This is what many of us do. Sometimes it’s a useful behavior—call it an attention to detail. In a work context, generally an employer appreciates such rigor from its employees. This is something I’ve at times taken great pride in professionally. I spot things—constantly. Little things that seem off, ones in both isolation and ones connected to a wider system. It feels good to call these out, to round them up and propose a solution that smooths over their jagged edges. That brings clarity and order to a mess. That demonstrates I have a discerning eye. One roving endlessly, seeking for a new problem to solve.
When does this “discerning eye” start to work against me, though? Well, pretty often, it turns out. In most environments—and in life as a whole, really—is it useful to see something wrong with everything? Is it helpful to feel like no matter what you do, who you surround yourself with, what goals you hit…that it’s never enough? What if you go from the cradle to the grave simply trying to complete every experience to the fullest, just to feel like you’re never getting there the whole time? What kind of a life is that?
To use this week’s post as a bit of a therapy session, what I’ll propose to these existential questions is this: if we ever feel that things aren’t enough, like homes, jobs, relationships, things, even us as individuals…why not reframe the reality from one where nothing is ever enough to one in which everything is always enough? Why not? Instead of constantly striving for perfection while suppressing the itching feeling that we’ll never get there, why not just acknowledge the absurdity of it and counter the bad-feeling statement with an equally true one? If you’re never there, you’re always there. Isn’t that the case?
Bet you didn’t expect such a brief, offbeat philosophical exploration from Footbridge on this here Friday. I didn’t either, but it happens sometimes. This is Substack after all—the land of unpolished ideas. We can let it fly here. We can allow it to be enough.
I think you need to cycle between those extreme frames . The question is with what frequency ?
I think “from the cradle to the grave” is an overstatement: at some point, you learned the criticizing behavior. It’s not innate. To your point there were rewards associated with being discerning in this way at least in your career if not also personal life.
But I think the total inversion of the framing - to everything is enough - has its problems too. I wonder if the right approach is to try to identify the most important aspects of your life (those that are most important to your contentedness) and ask yourself how those can be enough, while leaving the other parts open for change.