a perfect dream, a tragedy

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” -Anna Quindlen

During the start of the semester, in one of the courses I am taking, we were asked to take a certain personality type test that would determine what type of person we are in terms of approaching things, in making decisions and seeing life in general.  About two week ago, we received the results and mine is below.

“I have high internanal standars for correctness, and I expect myself to live up to those standards.  It’s easy for me to see what’s wrong with things as they are and to see how they could be improved.  I may come across to some people as overly critical or demanding perfection, but it’s hard for me to ignore or accept things that ar enot done the right way.  I pride myself on the fact that if I’m responsible for doing something, you can be sure I’ll do it right.  I sometimes have feelings of resentment when people don’t try to do things properly or when people act irresponsibly or unfairly, although I usually try not to show it to them openly.  For me, it is usually work before pleasure, and I suppress my desires as necessary to get the workd done.”

In short, according to the Enneagram Personally Test we took, I’m in the level 1, A Perfectionist.  I was utterly shocked when I found out.  I figured I would be better of in the Challenger category, or the Achiever but not the Perfectionist because I don’t see myself as being a perfectionist, trying to manipulate people in order to get the my vision of a work done.  I don’t even recheck typographical errors, how can I be a perfectionist then?

However, last week, during the special week of my organization in the university, it was pointed out by some people that I am indeed a Perfectionist.  You see, that week was under the Team I handle in the org.  It was under my team and I had big dreams for that week, to make sure that things go out as planned and to see through it that the image I had in my mind was achieved.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t technically my project and I couldn’t do anything about it.  I could only suggest and suggest and give lots of advice for the project to be successful as I wanted it to be.  The whole week was a very mediocre representation of my imagination.

I wanted to cry and take the project off from the hands of the project heads.  I wanted to take charge and make it as I wanted it to be.  I was, I think, already being too bossy to them already, demanding things to be done this way and that way, ignoring probably the fact that they have their own lives too.  During a night session with one of my friends, I was ranting to him all the chaos that the week was turning out to be.  I told him of the tragic that was already happening and said the I think if they did this or did that things would have turned out better.  I was telling him my fear of the culminating night for the entire week, the one that costed so much money that it should be successful.

He then made me see, why am I too concerned with how I would feel about the project, why don’t I just focus all my energy in seeing how the project made other people, especially the children that we cater to, smile.  The point of these projects and such is not for me to see how successful I am or how happy I would be with them but with the fact of knowing that this project actually made other people happy.

Success does not depend on the effect of things for oneself, but on the effect of things for others.

I then realized, I was being selfish the entire time.  I was so cooked up on making things appear exactly out of my imagination that I failed to see that these things we are doing is not actually for us, but for the special people whose hope, even a little, relies on us.

During that night, I tried closing my eyes to all the negative things that were happening (of course I couldn’t because I can perfectly see them) and concentrated on the fact that the kids were smiling, they were enjoying themselves and that even their parents and guardians were having fun.  After seeing those things occur, I enjoyed myself as well.