Smooth Ice Cream

“When I was in high school, my math teacher Mr. Packwood used to say, ‘If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.’ “ Mark Manson

When I was young child, I had an obsession with smooth things, smooth ice cream and smooth peanut butter in particular.  I’ve been told that if someone dipped a spoonful of ice cream, for example, before I could see the smooth surface upon opening, I would pitch a fit.  I would throw a fall-on-the-floor, screaming tantrum. For years I’ve chuckled at myself for being so OCD and silly as a kid.  Now that I’m spending serious time and money dealing with my issues with perfectionism, it’s not as funny.

I guess you might say that I’m “in therapy”.  Instead of seeing my counselor every six months or so like I have for twenty five years, I see him about every three weeks. I’m not doing this because I’m any more screwed up than usual.  It’s because about three months ago I decided to deal with some life issues head on.  I was tired of acting and reacting in certain situations like I always have.  My reactions were an ongoing problem for me and those I love around me.  This was not a moral problem or an ethical problem, it was a phobia that I deal with. And I was ready to get better.  When this “therapy” started, perfectionism wasn’t even on the docket.  But it’s on the docket now.

Until recently, I had never considered myself to be a perfectionist.  I just wanted to do EVERYTHING perfectly.  I didn’t want to make any mistakes.  No mistakes. None. Ever. This tendency created some positive results.  I graduated with honors from high school and then from four undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities. But along that journey there were problems. Referencing the quote above, I remember how upset I was about changing classes in the seventh grade.  In elementary school I had had one teacher for all subjects in one classroom. Easy enough to excel.  It was hard for me to wrap my head around a different class and a different teacher for every subject. My concern was that this would mean a heightened level of expectation and scrutiny from each teacher. One afternoon early in that fall term, I was working on a problem for Mrs. Mills in algebra.  This was not for a test; it was just homework.  Furthermore, she gave us the correct answers. But I wanted a perfect score.  I was able to complete the assignment except for one problem.  No matter how much I worked on it, I could never get the right answer. I even remember that I cried a bit. On the nth time through I realized that I was making a subtraction error.  I corrected that error and solved the equation. But my point is not that I made a perfect score, but that I HAD to make a perfect score.

I said that “perfectionism created some positive results.”  But it's not all positive or I wouldn’t be “in therapy.” Perfectionism is also like a demon, who torments you not by pushing you with his pitch fork toward unquenchable fire, but by constantly prodding you toward  an unattainable goal.  It's like Sisyphus who was doomed to push the boulder to the top of the hill only to see it roll to the bottom and then have to do it again and again. My counselor said, “The reason perfectionism is useless is because perfect doesn’t exist.” There is a Broadway rock opera that I discovered quite by accident.  My “Broadway” Spotify radio station introduced me to it. at the car wash.  This musical is about a family, primarily the wife and mother, dealing with her bipolar illness and her loss of a son. By the end, the point of the play is that “normal” doesn’t exist for them, so they need to all be content with Next to Normal (the title of the play). So my counselor said, in other words, “David, perfectionism doesn’t exist. Be content with 'very good'. Or better yet, be content with 'good'. " In a perfect world (pun intended) I should be content with "okay." My counselor said,"Humans make mistakes. You're a  human; you're going to make mistakes."

All I can figure is that even as I young child as I looked at my family and the world around me, I knew even then that things weren’t perfect.  So it was vitally important to me to  see that smooth ice cream before its surface was violated with a spoon. Apparently I thought that seeing that one space of perfection brought order to my existence. Or who knows, maybe I just liked smooth ice cream. Now as an older adult, I’m realizing that as perfect as smooth ice cream looks to me, eating ice cream is even better.