My Minimalist Mind: Perfectionism

The relationship between minimalism and perfectionism, in theory and in practice.

Transcript

When I was young, between 8 and 12, I used to build plastic models – those ones that came in kits, with instructions, and decals, and you had to put them together with your own glue, and paint them with your own paints. The glue stank and the paints were in little glass bottles about two inches high, and with metal caps.

I built perhaps the typical things that boys of that era were interested in: cars, planes. I remember specifical-ly that one was a school bus and another was a model of the moon-landing vehicle. I ended up with a little plastic collection on the dresser in my room. The numbers were manageable though because I also deconstructed a lot of models. I remember that the idea was that I would salvage the parts and use them for models that I would make myself – no pre-designed kit, no instructions. What I ended up with though was simply a well-organized collection of parts, but with no original models resulting from them. I always thought I would build a car out of a soft-drink can: put a couple of axles on it, some wheels, and who knows what else for the body of the thing. But I never did.

I remember that with the school bus, as usual, the effort was toward perfection in the painting. I painted the black inside the logical lines that it should have been contained in, but there was just a little bit over those lines, and so my impulse was not to correct that somehow, or certainly not to accept the imperfection, but rather to keep painting outside the logical area, and so ending up with a final result that had more black on it than was appropriate for a regular school bus. It would be like a sculptor who is never satisfied with his work as he sees it developing in front of him, and so he keeps chipping and chipping away at it until it’s down to nothing, or until he makes that one last chip at it and the whole thing just crumbles into a pile.

The perfectionist mindset suits me as a minimalist for two main reasons. First, of course, is aesthetics: the quest to have things pared down is very similar to the quest to have things perfect. The fewer things that there are in any system, the more likely that it is going to be both minimal and perfect. The other reason, though, is that the quest for perfection complements very nicely the quest for anything minimal, because there is nothing perfect in the world, and so the minimalist is likely to reject the imperfect or even the almost perfect, thereby also satisfying his desire to have nothing. Both the minimalist and the perfectionist might, for example, drop you as a friend as soon as you become the least bit untidy or troublesome: sometimes it’s better to have nothing or no one than to have the mess of a real person to deal with.

There are sometimes (if not often, if not most of the time) in life when something is better than nothing, and perhaps much much better than nothing. And there are times when something imperfect, something not fully beautiful, something incomplete, is also better than nothing. These are tenets that I have to remind myself of continually: I have a really hard time accepting and practicing them. I am much more prone, of course, to simply discard something, or to have nothing in the first place, rather than make do with something. To some extent it’s a cop-out: in a world in which perfection and beauty are hard to come by, it’s taking the easy route out to simply go with nothing at all, and to rely on the inherent spare beauty of that. I know that something that is spare, or something that is nothing, is sometimes more likely to be beautiful just by virtue of the fact that there is less there to be ugly.

Both minimalism and perfectionism are impossible dreams. I often worry that one of the main effects will be to doom me to a lifetime of dissatisfaction and a sense of failure. Perfection is not attainable on this side of heaven: nothing is absolutely pure, flat, straight, even, symmetrical. Nothing is absolutely anything on earth. In order for a perfectionist to survive with any good sense of self or satisfaction, he must accept the concept of “as good as it can get.” The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in The Imaginary that “nothing real is beautiful” or “the real is never beautiful” (“le réel n’est jamais beau”). Some perfectionist minimalists don’t realize that this is true.

In an insightful article in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, Allan Mallinger identifies many of these same problems with perfectionism in an obsessive personality. The basic danger of perfectionism is that “it can damage every vital facet of life, from romance to work to parenting, and may increase one’s vulnerability to various psychiatric problems, including depression … and eating disorders” (103-104). The perfectionist tries “to reduce anxiety through an illusory pursuit of invulnerability and certainty,” and has a “need for the illusion of control as a way of coping with the perception of vulnerability and the associated anxiety” (108):

Many perfectionists have difficulty fully enjoying anything that has flaws, including their job, the personality or appearance of a lover or family member, their dinner, vacation spot, or television reception, the quality or appearance of any object in their domain, such as their car or living room rug, and the degree of orderliness or organization in their immediate environment … Their attention to flaws is rigid and exaggerated and consequently is painful or damaging to them. Indeed, they may have difficulty enjoying anything perceived as flawed; and since no spouse, child, car or vacation is perfect, they are troubled much of the time. (118, 120)

I once bought a new pair of black leather shoes. Part of the plan for a minimalist in buying some new things is that he knows he will now have something new and likely of a higher quality than the old thing that he will now have the pleasure of throwing or giving away. At the store, though, that potential pleasure is tempered by worry that the new shoes will turn out to be faulty in some way – not faulty in the sense that a mistake was made at the factory and the shoes are in fact defective, but in the sense that they won’t be perfect. Shoes are a particular concern, because of symmetry: not only does each shoe have to be perfect in itself, but it has to be exactly like the other one.

They looked fine at the store and fit well and I tried to pretend to myself that I was casually buying a pair of shoes like hundreds of people do every day, and so I took them to the counter. Paid, went to the car, drove home. It’s only when I was examining them later that I discovered that the leather in one section of one of the shoes had a very different, slightly rougher grain than the leather anywhere else on either of the shoes. That fact didn’t have anything to do with the quality or the fit of the shoes. They felt great, even the one with the inconsistent section of grain, and they were a good brand so I wasn’t worried that this detail betrayed some major fault in the manufacture.

At this point, as for so many other purchases, there was a decision to make. I could return them to the store and then get the exact same pair at some other store, but examine them more closely first so as to expose the imperfections before I made the purchase. That would take time, and I might not even find them in any other store, and if I did I might not find a perfect pair in the second store either. The other alternative was to accept the imperfection and move on. Generally, I (like perhaps most perfectionist minimalists) can’t do that blithely. There is a feeling of resignation associated with this choice, coupled with a sense of forced practicality: the minimalist realizes that there are no objects in the world that are likely to live up to his expectations or standards, and so the only practical thing to do is to accept.

Practicality is one of the main drivers in such purchases. It would be somewhere between impossible and inordinately time-consuming to, say, scout out all the stores that have those shoes and try to end up with the one pair that is perfect. And perhaps along the way reconsidering that style of shoe in the first place. The reason that I tend to avoid making purchases is not only the obvious one that the result is more things in my possession to clutter up his life. But there’s that other reason, too: everything, every thing, every object is shot through with imperfection, and so there is no thrill and excitement in buying anything. Rather, it’s an act of acceptance, of making do, of being barely satisfied, of being reminded yet again of how imperfect the world is. So, I not only have to acquire something, but I know right from the start that the thing is going to be disappointing.