Perfect & Immaculate

incubi notturni

Today I went into my professor's office because there was one question that I thought was a little ambiguous. It was a short-answer question and the description seemed so vague . . . . I knew all about the phrase he was looking for ("punctuated equilibrium") but the description on the exam ("name of the new theory of evolution") just wasn't getting me there. It is unlike me to argue for points in a class, but I had emailed both professors of this class to ask about two questions. One professor said that question #6 was clearly marked wrong and gave me two additional points. That meant that I only needed one more exam question right to get an A instead of an A-. And that seemed worth a trip to the professor's office and a setting aside of my pride. 

But he said no. He said it nicely, even apologetically, but he felt he just couldn't do it in good conscience. I assured him that I understood and that it was okay, but I was disappointed as I left his office. So close to keeping that 4.0! One question! But it wasn't really his fault; it was mine. I shouldn't have let myself get so close to an A- anyway! And as I walked through the Seminary halls back toward the parking lot I kept replaying the conversation over in my head--what I could have said, what my wonderful and persuasive arguments were. . . . blah blah blah. Then I stopped myself. "It's 10:00 in the morning and I can't go all day dwelling on this. Let it go. It is what it is."

Do I need a 4.0 to be happy? No. (But it doesn't hurt.) 

Later, after my husband came home, I started preparing for a Christmas Eve dinner that we're having at our house tomorrow. I chopped and peeled and mushed and rubbed and sprinkled. Then, having made a few things and prepped a few other things, I turned my attention to dusting and vacuuming and wiping and straightening. Why do I do all of that? I vacuumed 2 days ago. Did I really need to vacuum again? Yes, because my house must be immaculate for guests. We keep a clean house anyway, but "clean" isn't good enough. It must be perfect.

Why? When I go visit someone's house I don't require perfection. I don't really care if they have a messy house with an overflowing garbage can or nail polish bottles all over the living room floor, or a pile of laundry in the bathroom. It really doesn't bother me. And I hear that messy-house people are more hospitable and better hosts than immaculate-house people, which seems true. So why do I feel this compulsion to cook and clean to perfection? I realized today that I don't need a perfect house to entertain guests. That didn't keep me from rearranging our magazines, however.

Oh and by the way, good news: the professor had changed the grading scale ever so slightly right before grades were sent in, so that one corrected answer on my final exam was enough to raise my grade. I get to keep my perfect, immaculate 4.0 and sustain my unrealistic, OCD fantasies.

Tenacious, dysfunctional, undependable me.

Two things:

One. I'm a completely undependable person, especially to myself. There is no other person in the world that I hear so many excuses from, nor any other person that I have to keep such a close watch on. If I give myself an inch, I'll take a mile. It is ridiculous. I'd sever the relationship, but I can't find a way out.* 

Two. I struggled today as I looked at my to-do list. Joshua and I have a system for our house chores and it works so well---when we use it. We have cards for each item needing to be done, color coded by frequency, a nice little card file box with nice little dividers for days and months. The problem is not at all with the system, but with me. My struggle was that I didn't feel like doing my particular tasks tonight . . . and I'm on Christmas break, so what's the rush? Why not wait until I feel like doing it? I have all the time in the world! So I as dusted and vacuumed and shampooed and wiped I had a few minutes to think over this dilemma and I've decided something: I need to do my chores when I don't feel like doing them. Not just to keep the system running, either, but because I need practice at doing what needs to be done when I lack the desire to do it. Self-discipline won't come to me from on high, it has to be developed. (And I can't wait until I feel like it to start developing it!)

lazy gorilla. 

*The theologian in me must remark on this. Biblical theology describes a death to self and a resurrection life, the life of the living Christ lived out in the believer (see Romans 6 and Galatians 2). In this sense, it is possible to change the relationship of ourselves to our "selves." But biblical theology seems also to say that this dying to self is a regular process; in other words, we have to keep breaking off the relationship and choosing another master. So in this sense, we are never free of "self" until the final transformation at the second advent of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 John 3). 

All of the Above.

Recently my adult life has taken an unexpected turn. An outsider couldn't observe it, but I've noticed it--deep in the recesses of my thinking, there has been a small deviation; hidden away, my psychology has ever so slightly turned its feet from the known path. And it's causing me a little anxiety.

All my life I've been told--and I have believed--that I could do anything I wanted to do. I could be a doctor, a politician, a writer, a forest ranger, a hairstylist, a nanny. Even outside of professional aspirations, there was no limit to what I could do if I only put my mind to it. I could run a marathon, learn seven languages, ride a unicycle, have 1000 friends, live off the land: whatever I wanted. I had the capacity to learn anything, to garner any desired skill sets, to be and do anything I wanted to.

But I'm realizing that, if it were ever true, it's not true anymore.

I'm in graduate school now and to come here I had to choose what I would study: religion or social psychology (or linguistics or cultural anthropology or human genetics...). My life, my career, my calling, my employer led me to this school to take this masters degree in this religion. So I didn't go to that other school and get that other masters in that other area. In so doing, I closed that door. I had to decide on something and that meant deciding against something else.

And in this masters program I'm already trying to formulate a focus area for my thesis. It's still two years away, but I am beginning to feel a bit of worry over it. Some of that worry is about whether or not I have the self-discipline to write something so demanding, but quite a bit of the concern is about choosing because I know that it will be another narrowing down of my life. I'll be closing more of those doors. And no matter the dimensions, I want every door wide open. I want to be able to survey the horizon and see every possibility. I want always the freedom to circle "E. All of the Above."

the machete turned against me.

Just now--reading this book and thinking through these questions--I realize that I had such an opportunity last year in Oregon and I wasted it. They gave me mostly uncharted territory and a machete and I let myself be argued into compliance by So-and-so: figuring out what "they" wanted done and then half-heartedly and half-effectively doing it. I could have been cutting open the box. I could have been doing the unsanctioned thing. I could have been taking commission culture somewhere. But it will live instead a meek life as the lingo of the Conference administration. How sad. I hope one day that I can do something to change that.

And this--this!--is why I was so unhappy last year, so dissatisfied with my work. I wasn't doing what I was meant to do, what I wanted to do, probably not even what I was hired to do. They didn't need another secretary, they needed a change agent and I failed them. I listened to the wrong voice and I took the well-worn path, the path of caution and compliance. Why? Why did I let myself down and my church down that way? These thoughts are all discouraging, but I finally feel like I've made sense of it. I finally understand why I felt the way I did in Oregon. That took a while.