This was long due, as in I had the idea long back…right the day I decided to leave my first job within fifteen days of my joining :) and certainly I’m sure there’s nothing to boast about….
This is just a point of view or to be more just my perception….and on no account I believe that people would agree, accept and relate to me… as I said… it’s just an Idea and that’s it!
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My previous employer was an extremely generous man… he gave me a trial ground to try everything unconventional and happening…be it a sauna bath in the middle of the night or slogging 12 hours at a stretch and the wonderful part was that he even paid me for all my hits and misses, so this isn’t an obituary to his HR policies and neither a back bighting trick on his “hard core” “grueling” “unjust” training schedules (by the way these adjectives aren’t mine…these are a gift from my colleague of what she thought). So as I go about I would certainly draw instances from my short stint at his “training camp” but this piece of writing is strictly not about him.
I was looking at the tall oxford replica library which is constructed for all the trainees to sit and study when I first thought about how the first civil engineer would have thought of something like this magnificent……oh sure that this one was a copy cat but then what about the one who did build it at the first place…. I mean something would have struck him right, an inspiration to motivate him…long Gothic style towers and rims of glasses to beautify it, and then suddenly….. The very next second another thought struck me
“Why the whole thing doesn’t just crumble down to nothing” …
well I did not want to get inside and study so obviously this thing came up to me… but this is just a small instant of my reaction to tough things….or u can say an im-perfectionists reaction to anything that’s “not her kind”
I am not a sadist and I am not a pessimist but trust me this is how an im-perfectionist thinks every Sunday night when he knows he will have to get up the very next day and slog…this is usually his reaction when his day goes bad and suddenly everything becomes irritating and disgusting…this is how he believes that the world is made off….mostly of dislikes dotted with few likings.
But my point is who merits over whom? Is an im-perfectionist better than a perfectionist or vice versa? Drawing parallel thoughts about each I have a strong belief that a person is not satisfied because he or she thinks that he hasn’t yet achieved what he deserves. And contrary to this theory a perfectionist though after lots and lots of strikes comes to it that yes he has achieved to his optimum. One perfectionist might have thought about how to start a business with information technology but it’s the im-perfectionist like me who is helping it to run day after day. May be he is not satisfied, may be he is a timid creature and maybe he is just not the kind to think something big but whosoever has the capability to think big can only make it big when the im-perfectionist comes to help.
I may sound communist but this isn’t a communist approach… neither am I boasting of my thinking, all I am saying is when the perfectionist stops at a halt it’s the im-perfectionist who keeps the wheel turning in hope that someday he will reach where he wishes too.
I was reading to Richard DeVos and he was talking of some difference between stubbornness and perseverance, well I think it is equally applicable to those who believe in perfection and are incapable of the flexibility that the either has. He is dissatisfied till he achieves his goal…Good… but the unfortunate thing is he sets goal that are achievable.
On the other hand an Im-perfectionist has his goals too…they are just too far to achieve and this pulls him farther and farther and farther of his capabilities.
I had looked up to so many of them who are perfectionists, idolized them, wanted to become like them but unfortunately each of them failed to inspire me to become someone who I can respect. They did fuel me with faith and confidence, they did teach me to persevere…to hang on till the last minute but they never taught me to cut the cord and experience uncertainty for the good.
They never taught me how to simply wander sometimes, aimless searching for ones desire and still not being lost.
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That night I was at the cafeteria Coffee shop when I sat on the empty mess of 2000 chairs alone and watching a glass cased elevator go up and down as employees ended there days work and were returning home… it would have been 1 in the night and while back at my home all were in deep slumber my city was still in the middle of its jog….Every day thousands of aspirations take there flight when they first take up the elevator to the training school and every night hundreds of aspirations come crashing down when they realize this isn’t where they want to be, and I say hundred because certainly for few this is the place that they want to be….but trust me they are just handful rest all want to be perfectionists by doing something everybody wants them to, ditto as they want them to …. Run the mill…reach the destination and stop…never knowing how much they could have done if just some im-perfectionist would have taught them how to cut the cord and let lose….
Two years back I was listening to a video conference by Prof. John Nash, although he was distractive and very often he would jump off to irrelevant topics due to his disease unless someone again pointed him to the topic of discussion, he made a beautiful statement by the end of his lecture and I’m sure of the 500 of us who got the chance to be seated into the lecture theater of the Indian institute of technology while the rest thousands could not as there were no seats available, 90 percent of us would never forget what he said… referring to his research that has supported theories of operational research and that he being a genius, he looked at all of us and said
“I am on the wrong side of the fence…We are making products of each human child whose brain is capable of creation beyond the boundaries of this universe…We are justifying our misdeed by the name of education and employment….We have build a saddening system where we just make fine clones….I’m not a genius If I would have been I would have found a system to help God in preserving individuality of each mind and not support the system to build just products”
I’m sure all of us would have thought what “a beautiful mind”.
It isn’t justifying the incapability of an average human being, neither exemplifying gloriously running away of an average Indian from tough things, Its just an Idea that sometimes Beauty lies in imperfection, sometimes it is better to take a U turn if the road isn’t leading you to the right destination, sometimes it is better to be fearless and go ahead into something which is unexplored and unadvised.
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Tomorrow I might go and join another of an IT firm same like my previous employer just because so deep is the perfectionist theory embedded in me that I find it difficult to shake it and throw it out. I am no maverick, but what I have learnt is that a change is provoked if not realized in me….I have learnt that a change is not that difficult as it seems…a change is not that fearsome as it is made to be and that me being an imperfect creation can achieve farther miles than me running behind bottle neck perfections.
In my previous blogs I have written about my past life…mostly about relations that I have cherished…
That day as I sat looking at the elevator I realized that what I cherish is not perfection….no body has been perfect in my past life, they have just known and realized their dreams….My father, mother, sister, friends all have been im-perfectionists within themselves if not to the world because they still desire to achieve so much more…that civil engineer who would have built Gothic structures was also an Im-perfectionist because he desired to build taller buildings may be thats why today sky scrapers exist..
and right there I walked the line because I knew I desire for more and not just perfection.
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p.s. the word "im-perfectionist" is devised...just to explain the idea.
