perfectionism is just a pretty way to say crippling fear of failure

This episode is sponsored by gifted kids™️

(Prediction: Substack would have more perfectionists than the average population. Will share results next week)

---

The word “perfectionist” entered my life like an invisible nuke.

A girl from America moved to my school in 8th grade, and she was a lot of things I wasn't - a foreign being. She was loud at an age that made her bold. She was friendly yet aggressive. But perhaps most alien to me, she had a worldview with razor-sharp definition.

Nowadays I'm not sure that's a good thing. If you have such a well-defined worldview so young, you probably didn't come to it yourself ¹. But back then I was pulled by the solidity, attracted to the pride with which she proclaimed to being a perfectionist.

I was still at that age where I figured that if someone says something with conviction it's something you ought to be proud of, the way you learn the definition of a word by its context. I mistook the seamlessness of “perfectionist” clicking into my identity as a sign that it must be right.

But if I could talk to my younger self, I would say this. School has tricked you into thinking perfection can be achieved. You will build expectations higher and higher until reality can never fulfil them. You will run from failure with actions you don't take, and hide your desires in the corners of your mind. You will envy others for their simplicity, for their incompetence, for the way they wear their hearts on their sleeve. The pride that you hold is just a dressed-up fear.

High school me would probably file that under “classic adult BS”. So it'd have to be a longer letter, something like this.

Fuji, 2023

Hey Jesse, it’s you from the future. I don’t have much time, so I’ll get right into it (not because of time travel limitations, but because the attention span of this internet stranger is tingling for tiktok. You’ll get it in a couple of years).

Perfectionism is ruinous because its flaws and benefits come from the same source. The flaws that ruin you, and the good parts that keep you reeled in right up to the danger.

For example, one thing I like about perfectionists is that they try. They try incredibly hard because they've unintentionally found the greatest lever of human behaviour - identity. When something is deeply embedded in your identity, failure is existential.

Having perfection as part of your identity wouldn't be so damaging if perfectionism weren't such a hackable system. At some point in life, you would come up against a wall so tall you could not scale it. A test that was too hard. Another kid, more talented than you. You would break, bleeding your perfectionism all over the ground. But life would go on. That probably happens to a good portion of kids.

But if you are in an a) environment where perfectionism is attainable like school, and are b) gifted™️ enough, you can get very far without failing. Far enough for perfectionism to warp your worldview.

Guilin, 2023

You'll meet plenty of people in college who have never gotten a B once in their life. Imagine having a slice of your life where you have achieved nothing short of true perfection for 18 years².

What nobody tells you is that the education system also teaches ignorance. Not like the obvious oversimplified narratives taught in history class, but in subtle implications of the shape of the world. One of these implications is that perfection exists in the real world.

You cannot get better than an A, so perfection becomes possible. You don't know school has set an arbitrary ceiling on your world, determined by the average of the kids before you.

Running your fingers along this ceiling, you have two paths. The first is the one of the overachievers. They try desperately hard at everything. But you’ll take the second path.

If you already have an A, how do you do better? How do you show you're smarter than the other kids who get an A? You try less. The only thing more impressive is getting an A without trying (by the way, your “subtle” flexes of not studying are not subtle. You are deeply annoying).

This is when you learn a terrible lesson: The more you try, the harder you can fail.

You're a smart kid, so subconsciously you make another extrapolation: You cannot fail if you do not try.

It feels like failure to want something and not get it. So you start to suppress what you want so well that you live for years without realising you want it. That's the damage. You have this incorrect image of a world with perfection, and you lie to yourself and the world to protect it. The only way to be perfect is to lie about all the ways you're not.

Lying to yourself is not always bad - there are some helpful lies. But lies to protect perfectionism narrow the shape of your life in an insidious way.

It'll seem like you're doing well from the outside because appearance is what perfectionism is really about. You can't choose what perfect is. If you just decided what it is, it would be arbitrary. Meaningless. But perfection isn't a real thing, so instead you let somebody else define it for you.

Spoiler alert: What society tells you to do isn't what's best for you. So let me ask you this: What'll happen if you don't let yourself desire things that live outside a rubric? What'll happen if you only allow yourself to get A's?

You will want to start a youtube channel and draw and write. But you're unwilling to be bad at anything, so you lock yourself into doing (the small amount of) things you're already good at for the rest of your life. Your so-called "high standards" turn any stair into a wall because you're unwilling to take the first step.

You won't admit that you desperately crave love. You will have crushes for years but never once let them fucking know. You will hide under the guise of “knowing them better”, but behind the mask is a crippling fear of rejection.

Guilin, 2023

The thing about perfectionism is that it is rooted in fear. You stray from things where the outcome cannot be pre-determined by sheer will and slightly above-average talent. You will diminish your dreams in fear of not achieving them, the irony being that you guarantee not achieving them.

You will stay away from chaos, from the unknown. But that is where the magic of life happens. All creation is plucked from chaos. Chaos is the dimension that art lives in, that love lives in.

You will search for a rubric even for love, but there is no rubric for love. For years, you'll try to make one. You will measure and analyse, you will be prudent and wise. And you will miss it, again and again. Even now, I’m attracted to this idea. But you can’t collapse a person into a rubric.

You do not calculatedly dip your toes into love. To fall in love, you must fall.

You have to surrender your heart to the hands of another. Risk and reward are not opposites, they are made of each other. Risk is the cotton to the fabric of reward.

What I'm trying to say is that instead of desperately trying to create a rubric for love, realise that love is the rubric. That's the only thing you need to get an A in life. This isn't the corny BS people tell you. Love wins.

When you do something you love, there is no end state. There is no perfection. That's the advantage of doing things because you love it. It's boundless.

You will always lose to those who love the run itself. There is no goalpost they stop for. They don't have to force themselves to do the thing, they will squeeze in more hours and care than your crippling fear of failure can ever pull from you. They will obsess over details you will gloss over. One day you will love someone, and it will become obvious. The curve of her eyes, the sound of her thought, your ordered list of her cutest freckles. Try competing against someone who sees in that resolution.

What's the point of this act where you are the performance and the audience? What's the point of this cat-and-mouse game you play between your fear and desire? Your stupid obsession with optimising for the thing loses to just doing it.

You can either spend the next 8 years avoiding failure or have everything you want by then.

Your choice.

Sincerely,

Future you

P.S. Stop playing League of Legends.

1. This seems to be a difference between Europeans and Americans. Lots of people I know who went to America for college came back with higher conviction and extremism in political and worldly beliefs.

2. [cut text] Imagine how frail your ego would be if you'd never lost a single game of badminton your entire life. Imagine how fearful you'd be. You’d try incredibly hard on games you know you could win, and not play against anyone you’re unsure about.