Hope in Perfection

Roughly a week ago, I was in a much more northern area of California, wearing a suit, clomping around in high heels, and wondering why in the world I had not gone to be earlier the night before.

Basically, if you want to do speech and debate, you have to be made of steel.

In other words, I was at my last qualifying tournament for the year. It was a very interesting three days. My debate partner couldn't make it, so I was just doing speech. Which meant I had almost the entire time to spend with my friends. I was really glad to have the opportunity. All the other tournaments this year, I've been busy with debate, and haven't really been able to spend time with the people I almost never see. This tournament wasn't really about my rankings. Honestly, I barely cared about how well I did at all. Which is good, since I did terribly in one speech, pretty badly in another, and although the third went okay, I didn't manage to break at all. And I think this is the first time I can truly say that I'm happy I didn't break--because that gave me three hours to spend watching speeches and hanging out with friends.

After reading that, you may wonder why I used the title that I did. If I stunk in all of my speeches...how is that perfection? It's not. So read on, and I'll do the best to explain.

I talk about perfection and success a lot. I talk about how we can't achieve everything. I point out the fact that there is no possible way we could live up to everyone's standards and be exactly who they want us to be. And this past week, I realized something--perfection and success are so, so relative. There really isn't any objective definition of the two, probably for the mere fact that no one is completely successful or perfect. Frankly, this is one of the most hopeful things I ever came to realize. If I can determine my own success and perfection, it's a whole lot easier to achieve.

I've spent the last thirteen years of my life trying to be perfect. I've tried to be everything that everyone wants me to be. I've tried to be the best. I've tried to be the smartest. The coolest. The prettiest. The funniest. And when I couldn't, I thought that meant I had failed. But while talking to one of the dearest people in the world to me last week, I realized that I had only failed to achieve my unachievable standard.

There are so many things I could be. There are so many people I could attempt to please. There are so many molds I could try to put myself in so I be what someone wants me to be. But if I really think about it, I don't find it successful just to make a few people like me and accept me into their cliques. Honestly, that's kind of shallow. I'm not sure what my personal standard of success and perfection is yet. But I can very clearly see now what it's not.

I'm not writing this post to tell you what your standards should be. I'm simply trying to persuade you all to really think about it; consider what you're trying to force yourself to be; determine whether or not you actually want to be that.

I know, this is short. I'm still trying to understand it all myself. I'll probably make a few other posts stemming off of this topic. I just wanted to get that out there, and perhaps help someone.

Maybe, in someone's eyes, you are perfect.