Word of the Week #339:
So, an interesting thing happened at work today.
Oh, sidenote: I have an interesting new job. Maybe I’ll talk more about it sometime.
So, today at work, something incomprehensible, irreconcilable, utterly unacceptable thing happened.
I made a mistake.
And my boss pointed it out and said that she loved my work overall and that she’d handled my little mistake herself.
And when I immediately responded to her with an apology, she said something I have never heard in my entire professional career.
She said: “You’re not expected to be 100% perfect all the time. If you were, there’d be no need for me, right?”
I’ll be honest, that almost made me tear up…
Actually, not just my entire professional career, I may not have heard that very often in my entire life.
Am I not expected to be perfect? I honestly had not considered that.
Throughout our lives, isn’t that what is asked of us? Is it not our conditioning that makes us focus on the 1% we get wrong while ignoring the 99% we get right?
Is it my conditioning, though, or is it just my innate nature? My personal neurosis—that annoying whisper in the back of the head—that keeps reminding me that if I am not perfect, I will never get anything I want?
After having grown up in a world where we routinely lose out on opportunities without even having made mistakes, can we fathom a world where we are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them?
Hell, I even quit music because could never tolerate playing the wrong note even once!
Well, anyway, it might be a little late for me to change who I am. I know that even if I cannot expect sustained perfection from myself, I will not stop seeking it.
Just, it is good to know that if I do make mistakes, if I do occasionally fall, I have nice, kind people around me in the many spheres of my life who would willingly lend a helping hand.
That thought helped me sleep well this morning.
Yeah, my sleep schedule is somewhat off, again, but what can we do, right?
