Quindlen - Being Perfect

COPYRIGHT 2005 BY ANNA QUINDLEN

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-48212-9

Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

v3.1

W hen I try to recall the girl I was decades ago, at my high school graduation, I seem to have as much in common with her as I do with any stranger I might pass in the doorway of a Starbucks or in the aisle of an airplane. I cannot remember exactly what she wore, or how she felt, or what she said, or ate, or read. But I can tell you this about her without question: She was perfect.

Let me be very clear about what I mean by that. I mean that I got up every day and tried to be perfect in every possible way. If there was a test to be taken, I had studied for it; if there was a paper to be written, it was done. I smiled at everyone in the hallways because it was important to be friendly, and I made fun of them behind their backs because it was important to be witty. And I edited the newspaper and cheered at pep rallies and emoted for the literary magazine and rode on the back of a convertible at the homecoming game and if anyone had ever stopped and asked me why I did those thingswell, Im not sure that I could have said why. But in hindsight I can say that I did them to be perfect, in every possible way.

Being perfect was hard work, and the hell of it was, the rules kept changing. So that while I arrived at college in 1970 with a trunk full of perfect pleated kilts and perfect monogrammed sweaters, by Christmas vacation I had another perfect uniform: overalls, turtle-necks, clogs, and the perfect New York City college affect, part hypercerebral, part ennui. This was very hard work indeed. I had read neither Sartre nor Sappho, and the closest I ever came to being bored and above it all was falling asleep. And, finally, it was harder to become perfect because I realized at Barnard, a place populated largely by terrifyingly well-read women who all seemed to be elevating intellectual perfection to a high art, that I was not the smartest girl in the world. And eventually being perfect became like carrying a backpack filled with bricks every single day. And oh, how I wanted to lay my burden down.

So if this sounds in any way familiar to you, if you have been trying to be perfect, too, then perhaps today is the day to put down that backpack before you develop permanent curvature of the spirit. Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion. But at one level its too hard, and at another, its too cheap and easy. Because all it really requires of you, mainly, is to read the zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be and to assume the masks necessary to be the best at whatever the zeitgeist dictates or requires. Those requirements shape-shift, sure, but when youre clever you can read them and come up with the imitation necessary.

But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great, ever came out of imitations. What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

More difficult because there is no zeitgeist to read, no template to follow, no mask to wear. Terrifying, actually, because it requires you to set aside what your friends expect, what your family and your co-workers demand, what your acquaintances require, to set aside the messages this culture sends, through its advertising, its entertainment, its disdain, and its disapproval, about how you should behave.

Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notion of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most frightening of all things, a clean slate. And then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am.

This is the hard work of life in the world, to acknowledge within yourself the introvert, the clown, the artist, the homebody, the goofball, the thinker. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.

It would seem as though this is the perfect moment in history to live with imperfection, to embrace variety and leave conformity on the assembly lines. The strictures that once defined human behavior have relaxed in many ways. Gay men and lesbians are able to reveal themselves to those they love. Different complexions, origins, and languages have become the norm, not the exception. The eccentric and the unusual have more room to grow unapologetically, and even to prosper. Sometimes I think the key to understanding how far weve moved over my lifetime is small and sartorial. Fewer occasions require ties. A girdle is no longer de rigueur. This is a more polymorphous world than the one in which I grew up. There is very little left worth staring at except in admiration.

And yet occasionally the old ghosts rise and remind us that the traditional ways are tenacious in reasserting themselves. When the president of Duke University commissioned a study on the status of women at the school, the results, released in 2003, were astonishing. Female undergraduates talked of a culture at the college of effortless perfection, in which they were expected to be attractive, well-dressed, in great shape, and academically able.