Reflection #96 (12th January 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
On the front of this morning’s order of service there’s a picture of one of the greatest Olympic moments of my lifetime – that’s how I remember it, anyway, though I suppose it came along at a formative age for me – I was only eight years old when Torvill and Dean went to the Sarajevo Winter Olympics and performed their famous ice dancing routine to Ravel’s Bolero. Maybe if you didn’t grow up in Britain in the 80s this won’t mean as much to you – though Torvill and Dean are still somewhat revered in this country – I believe they’re now judges on ITV’s ‘Dancing on Ice’.
Back in 1984 their Olympic performance was watched live by 24 million people here in the UK. They brought home the gold medal, and became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time, gaining perfect marks across the board for artistic impression: 6.0 from every judge. In those days such magic moments weren’t endlessly rehashed as they are now – everything wasn’t clipped up for social media – this was well before YouTube – and in our house we didn’t even have a video recorder until a few years later in 1987 – and I think this added something to the mythology of it all. There was just this collective memory of a perfect moment from these artist-athletes at the top of their game (of course it is on YouTube now – I watched it last night – and I got the shivers all over again.)
Why am I bringing up Torvill and Dean this morning, you might wonder? Well, back in the day, my dad had an opinion about their performance; more precisely about the record scores they attained. At the time I thought he was just saying this to get on my nerves, but in retrospect I think it was a sincerely held opinion: my dad firmly believed that nobody should ever be awarded 6.0 for anything. In his view, any judge awarding full marks, six out of six, was effectively saying that the dance was perfect, the last word, and nothing could ever be better. And this couldn’t be true. They’d left themselves nowhere to go. As marvellous as the routine was, I think this is what he was saying, you’ve got to allow for the possibility that something even better might be achievable in the future. It really annoyed me at the time but, 40-odd years later, I am ready to grudgingly concede he had a point. Perfection, in this view, is by definition something ultimately unattainable. But still, we humans may find ourselves compelled to reach towards it, to strive for something which is most likely beyond us.
We’ve heard two apparently contradictory readings this morning. In the first, Katherine Morgan Schafler spoke up in defence of perfectionists, misunderstood creatures that they (we?) are. Perfectionism has got a pretty bad name and it’s typically treated as a personality problem that needs to be fixed – I don’t know how many of us gathered here today would describe ourselves as perfectionists by temperament (tentatively raise your own hand) – but for some of us, at least some of the time, this perfectionist tendency is a genuine source of stress and anxiety which has a negative impact on our wellbeing – and I don’t want to be dismissive about that. Yet Schafler argues that perfectionism is ‘an excellent servant and a terrible master’ – she does acknowledge its problematic side – but she also reminds us that its power can be harnessed for the good.
In our second reading, Lindasusan Ullrich quoted Rebecca Solnit, who said ‘perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible’ (which in turn reminds me of ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’). Both of these sayings correctly highlight the way in which perfectionism can lead to paralysis. Sometimes the ideal of perfection we’ve got in our head inhibits us – we can’t bring ourselves to write on the blank page, or make the first brushstroke, or take our first dance lesson – as reality can’t possibly live up to this wonderful-yet-imaginary version that can only ever exist in our mind. We might decide to give up, or not even try, knowing we are likely to be disappointed by our own efforts. Or perhaps in fear that we will be judged by other people’s perfectionistic standards. Yet as Ullrich says: ‘good enough’ is often good enough. And – in reality – we are more likely to get better at what we do, closer to the dream of perfection, by just doing the thing. Practicing the art.
There’s a little teaching story which speaks to this idea and that’s really stuck with me. A bit of digging suggests that the story originates in a book called ‘Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking’ by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It goes like this:
A pottery teacher split her class into two halves. To the first half she said, “You will spend the term studying pottery, planning, designing, and creating your perfect pot. At the end of term, there will be a competition to see whose pot is the best”.
To the other half she said, “You will spend your term making lots and lots (and lots) of pots. Your grade will be based purely on the number of completed pots you finish. At the end of the term, you’ll also have the opportunity to enter your best pot into a competition.”
The first half of the class threw themselves into their research, planning, and design. Then they set about laboriously creating their one, perfect pot, to enter into the competition. The second half of the class immediately grabbed fistfuls of clay and started churning out pots at a tremendous rate. They made big ones, small ones, simple ones, and intricate ones. Their muscles ached for weeks as they gained the strength needed to throw so many pots.
At the end of term, as promised, both halves were invited to enter their most perfect pot into the competition, and judges voted on which was best. Once the votes were counted, all of the best pots came from the students that were tasked with quantity. The practice they gained made them significantly better potters than the planners on a quest for a single, perfect pot.
What are we to make of this story? For me it ties in with the quote we heard earlier from Georges Roditi: ‘Behind the word perfection, we should see the verb to perfect, endowing it with the same active meaning: an effort, an endeavour, not something finally accomplished.’ Perfection is a process, a striving, a direction of travel, rather than a destination we arrive at. Perhaps if we approach perfection in this way – as a practice we need to persistently stick at over the long haul in order to make progress – perhaps then we can use it to encourage greater aspiration, and spur us on to better things, rather than using it as a stick to beat ourselves with.
In the piece we heard from Schafler’s book she made reference to several so-called ‘geniuses’ – Steve Jobs, Gordon Ramsay, James Cameron – who are often lauded for their perfectionism. And you might be able to think of many other high-profile figures, current or historic, whose eminence in their field is attributed to a single-minded pursuit of excellence. There are so many good things in this world that only exist because someone strived for mastery and perfection – pushed themselves – and I suspect we can all call to mind stories of figures who committed themselves to their cause to such an extreme degree that it caused harm to themselves and others. This is an uncomfortable reality. We are surely glad that their creations – a sublime symphony or a beautiful painting – exist as a result of their efforts. Similarly, we might be thrilled and elated by the physical prowess that results in a gold medal or a world cup win for our team; grateful for scientists who have changed the world for the better with their discoveries and inventions; or activists who have brought about social revolutions. But sometimes, we know, their driven-ness can leave a trail of destruction in its wake.
Historically, we seem to have collectively – tacitly – conceded that this sort of behaviour is ‘worth it’ when it yields results that we can all admire or benefit from, though recently it seems that public opinion is starting to shift on this somewhat. Many of you will probably be aware of the controversy that surrounded Strictly Come Dancing last year, concerning the training methods that some of the professional ballroom dancers apparently used with their celebrity partners, and the differing views that people had on what was OK and what was not-OK to do in pursuit of perfect performance. And in fact – this might not be so well-remembered – but Torvill and Dean themselves were involved in a similar controversy back in the 90s when footage of their training sessions was made public. It’s still a live question, I think – if sacrifice, suffering, and struggle is necessarily part of this pursuit of perfection – and I do wonder if it might be – where do we draw the line and say: ‘enough – it’s not worth it’?
Katherine Morgan Schafler helpfully summarises the conundrum that we humans find ourselves in. She writes: ‘Perfectionism draws on a tension – wanting what you can’t have – you want the ideal to be the reality… The tension of perfectionism emerges from the constant clashing between the two most fundamental aspects of your identity – you’re a full-of-flaws human with significant limitations – and you’re a perfect being with unlimited potential. Reconciling the backseat fighting between your limits and your potential is the underlying challenge of perfectionism.’ Words from Schafler.
We speak so often in this church of working towards a better world, building beloved community, and it strikes me that this is a vision of perfection that we’re holding up as something to aspire to. We’re not there yet – and even if we know we’re unlikely to see that vision realised in our lifetime the idealised vision still has values as something to aim for – it inspires us to inch closer to that goal. Earlier we sang about ‘The Church Where Love Lives’ – do we live up to that vision? Not quite yet. As individuals, and as a community, we’re imperfect. Of course we are. But we lift our gaze higher.
To close I just want to echo some of those words from our meditation – words from David Aaron – as a reminder of the sacred context for all our strivings. Let us take this message to heart if we can:
You and I, who are imperfect, struggling in an imperfect world, working toward achieving more perfection, are vehicles for the expression of the dynamic aspect of divine perfection. We are those broken vessels living in a world of chaos, but we have a memory of a perfect light, which we yearn for and strive toward. God’s perfection is expressed through imperfect you and me, struggling to improve ourselves and this world together, striving and working hard toward becoming perfect. And may it be so for the greater good of all. Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall