The Problem With Perfect

"New beginnings give me hope, but they also scare the living daylights out of me.

Will this be the one? Will this make me happy? Will I be successful here? Can I serve Jesus here? Will it meet my expectations? What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t belong? What if I fail? What if I’m miserable? What if I suck at my job? What if I can’t do the things I want to? What if I’m too old? What if I’m too young? What if it’s not what I thought it was? What if…?

So many questions, so many doubts, so many fears.

As a millennial entering his 7th job and 6th city since graduating college a scant 4 years ago, I’ve had more than my fair share of transitions. From a support-raised ministry position in Chicago that burned me out, to a non-profit internship in Shreveport where I attempted to heal, to a swim school instructor job in Richmond just to do something different, I’ve put a lot of effort into keeping my options open.

...Mostly because I’m scared of commitment.

If there’s one thing that terrifies me more than starting over, it’s confining myself to an airless coffin that’s far too small for my dreams, my goals, or my fickle imagination. It’s finding myself stuck in a city, a job, a relationship, that I no longer care about once my interests have moved on. It’s discovering that this thing I placed all of my hope in isn’t actually strong enough to hold me. Eggs and baskets, right? I don’t want to settle, to waste time, to commit to one path only to realize I made the wrong choice.

Heck, I can’t even shave the hair I’ve been growing out for 3 years because there’s no taking it back once I cut it all off.

(I know. I have a serious problem. This is why I will never get a tattoo.)

The world is a painful place, and as a human, one of my primary decision-making factors is to avoid pain. But here’s the thing about avoiding pain: if you shut it out, you also shut out everything else. You become numb to joy and anger and hope and happiness and grief and passion and fulfillment and love and all of the other emotions that define our human experience. You’re left with nothing but a shell.

And the ironic part is that this emotionless shell who can’t make commitments to anything inevitably winds up making more transitions than he should, even though he finds them incredibly challenging and uncomfortable. Because if you never commit to one place, then you’re always going to be moving. That’s just how it works.

I’m caught between the rock and the proverbial hard place, and as a result, I’ve found that I’ve developed an intense addiction to perfection. Truthfully, it’s nothing more than a defense mechanism against all of my fears. After all, if something is perfect, then it won’t hurt me or damage me or cause me pain. If it’s perfect, I won’t desire to leave or change. If it’s perfect, it won’t let me down or be a waste of time.

But the problem with perfect is that it doesn’t exist.

There’s a story about a young farm boy who is given until sundown to find an ear of corn for his mother to use for dinner. But the rules are that once he starts down one row in the field, he cannot enter another. He also can’t go backwards; he must only move forward. And after he picks an ear, he cannot exchange it for another one. As he enters his row, he finds lots of big, luscious ears of corn (can corn be luscious?), but, considering that he had just started his hunt, he figured there must be even better ears of corn further ahead. He keeps walking, finding all sorts of ears that tempt him, but he wants to hold out until he finds the perfect ear of corn. Eventually, the dinner bell rings and he realizes that he has just about reached the end of the row and hasn’t picked his corn yet, but the only ears left between him and the exit are shriveled and wasted. Dejected, he returns home empty-handed.

The moral of the story, of course, is that greed gets in the way of happiness. That comparison is the thief of joy. That you cannot know the future or what it holds, so being wise and picking any one of a number of “good enough” options is better than holding out for a future perfect that might not even exist; and even if it does, it doesn’t discount the goodness of the choice you made.

I’ve been reading--well, skimming, mostly--a lot of career guides and self-help books lately while browsing the bookstore. They’re really big into the “lily pad” approach to pursuing a meaningful life; instead of “climbing a ladder” based on someone else’s view of success to reach a position that doesn’t necessarily fulfill you or suit your abilities, these gurus suggest a life-is-a-journey method of leaping from one experience to another, even if they don’t appear to have much to do with each other at first. To them, life is much more like a giant game of Plinko where there aren’t any wrong steps and there are multiple paths to your winning slot; if you find that you’ve bounced too far left, then take two rights to counteract it. Life is simply a matter of stringing the right experiences together like beads on a wire.

And while I’m not sure how seriously I take all of that stuff, it does help give me a sense of hope, or at least a feeling that I’m not alone, that I’m understood. (At any rate, that I’m not the only one who finds myself wrestling with worldviews handed down to me by previous generations.) It might be mumbo-jumbo, but at least it’s mumbo-jumbo backed up by a lot of scientific research.

Perfection. Transition. Commitment. Fear--they’re all jumbled up inside of me, immobilizing me more effectively than any straightjacket could. Although I know what’s right, it feels like that hard and painful road has led me to disappointment too many times in the past, and I’m not sure I am able to muster up the courage to commit to it once more.

But then I remember Who is writing my story. And as I enter the new year, full of new transitions and new beginnings, that’s the only thing that keeps my spark of hope alive. It might feel like I’ve made a lot of mistakes, like I’ve failed, like life has trampled me underfoot. (I mean, heck, at the time of this writing, I’m jobless, carless, technically homeless, and broke. Hi, my name is Joel, and I like to be brutally honest on the internet.)

But joy is a choice, and faith is a verb. I could choose to moan and complain about my circumstances. Or I could choose to find joy at this prospect of an exciting new start, trusting that maybe--just maybe--God has orchestrated all of this in a glorious symphony of pain and resurrection and coincidence. That maybe everything in my life has aligned to bring me here because this is exactly where I need to be right now (as Mordecai tells Esther, “for such a time as this”).

If this were one of those blog posts where everything gets wrapped up neatly and all the loose ends are tied, I would show how I’m overcoming my fears, making “good enough” choices rather than perfect ones, experiencing the value of sticking to commitments I’ve made, and handling transition well. But I’m still an imperfect person figuring all of this out. However:

-I have found a house downtown where the rent is cheap and the housemates have all agreed to pursue Jesus by engaging with our city and each other, serving those who have been overlooked. It’s an intentional Christian community for young adults that’s just getting started--and heyo, I have some experience in that field!

-I have not yet found a job, but the public transportation is pretty good, and I could always walk or bike if I land a position downtown; no car needed.

-And who knows; maybe tomorrow I’ll finally make an appointment for that haircut. :D

How are you guys handling your transitions into the new year? With hope, with fear, with something somewhere in between? Any advice for this wandering twentysomething?