I was scrolling through YouTube the other day, and stumbled upon another short by a guy claiming to be a wellness influencer, listing what he eats in a day. I rolled my eyes and swiped past, but something got me thinking, how did I already know what he was going to say? Why is “motivation” content (and there is a lot of it) so repetitive? Why is every guy who’s telling me to drink a gallon of water a day, also telling me to go to the gym and invest in the stock market?
I decided to do a little investigation (i.e. watched motivation channels on youtube for an hour) and developed a hypothesis. The way I see it, these guys were born into a shitty, messy, confusing, and unjust world. As they grew up, they began seeing it more and more for what it truly was, and that scared the hell out of them. They figured out they couldn’t really change it, so the only way to be happy would be to change themselves beyond recognition. They decided to try to crack the code of how to be “successful” in this world. The world told them that making themselves perfect would be a good start.
At this point, I realised that maybe they weren’t that different to me. For all my life, I too had been obsessed with the idea of achieving perfection in everything I did. If I was going to write something, it had to be the most perfect way of communicating that idea, or else it shouldn’t exist. If I was going to date other people, I needed to have a perfect body and perfect mental health. The circles that I existed in, were also obsessed with the idea of perfecting relationships. Of being ideal friends and partners to each other. Of never saying anything hurtful, or being messy or needy.
The boundaries of what is an acceptable way to be are shrinking every day. If you’re not going to the gym three times a week, you’re not just neglecting your body, but actively harming it. The same goes for food, if you’re eating anything beyond the perfect composition of macros, you’re causing long-term damage. If you’re buying yourself little treats, you’re careless with your finances and will never be able to save. And you need to be doing all of these things at the same time.You also need to be going to therapy, and working on your communication, and cooking your own food, taking the stairs, wearing sunscreen indoors.
It’s fucking exhausting. I feel like I’m stuck underwater with a million reasons to panic but I’m being told not to breathe too fast or I’d be wasting my oxygen.
So why are we like this? Besides the pervasive capitalist pressure to succeed and become rich, I think western philosophy is the largest culprit. In contrast to a lot of eastern philosophy that has been about observing the world and understanding life as it is, with its ups and downs and yins and yangs, western philosophy has almost entirely been driven by the idea of finding answers to what is good and right and best. There is little room for error.
The obsession with perfection causes societal harm. It is never good when the range of what is considered normal drastically narrows. People have never been homogeneous; when restrictive standards of normality are imposed, anyone who existed on the extremities has been outcast.
This is most clear in the realm of psychology: the pathologisation of difference has resulted in the ostracisation and mistreatment of anyone who was neurodivergent or had mental illnesses. People trying to “fix” or “cure” those with different ways of expressing themselves, working, and thinking, have been historically allowed to get away with horrific practices.
The pursuit of perfection is also harmful to all of us at an individual level. The more unrealistic standards we set for ourselves, the more we will fail at achieving them. And the higher the standards get for the “bare minimum”, the worse the sting of failure will be. Because now you’re not failing at being perfect, which most people could accept, you’re failing at being functioning. You’re failing at life. And when you feel like that for most of the things you’re doing in a day, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that feeds your anxiety. Even when you have moments of joy or moderate success, they are overpowered by the amount of guilt and worry about aspects of your life that aren’t ideal. Even when you do have opportunities to be happy, you feel like you have no right to be.
