Why Does Perfection Makes Us Miserable?
Because it's never enough. Plus, the Korean pursuit of aesthetic perfection, the "perfect days" of a Tokyo toilet bowl cleaner, and perfect Swiss/Belgian eats.
I remember the first time I identified perfection in a place. It was upon returning home to the neighborhood in which I grew up after teaching English in an impoverished rural village in Cambodia. There, I remember being shocked by the veterans without limbs and my young students who would violently attack each other in class because, I learned, that was the behavior of their parents at home. And yet, I was struck by abundance of happiness in the country known as “the land of smiles.” I returned home to my sunny neighborhood to children throwing temper tantrums to their nannies on the beach. It was the first time I identified perfection, and I resented it.
It’s why I’ve always been attracted to the United States, and New York in particular—they are places that are unapologetically imperfect. And yet, this summer I noticed a shift in me, when after many weeks on the road, I returned to the same sunny neighborhood in Toronto on Canada Day to a similar beach scene I recalled after Cambodia and found myself, instead, appreciating the perfection.
The Toronto beach hasn’t changed much in the 12 years between my two starkly different perceptions of it, what has changed is me. While New York is certainly a difficult place to live, my job has made me accustomed to luxury. I’m a perfectionist but I’ve never been one to immerse myself in perfect environments, and yet it’s where I find myself again and again. The problem, as the old Chinese parable goes, is you don’t see the water you’re swimming in until you’re out of your fishbowl.
I believe humans have an incredibly capacity to adapt, but how do we do so without becoming entitled and ungrateful? A couple weeks ago, I was in the company of someone who embodies both of these traits and I saw the way this character elicited disgust in those around me. I was humiliated by their behavior in public—the constant complaining and demanding tasks of service people only to be even more dissatisfied. When I dig a bit deeper, I think I resented this person because I saw a part of myself in their ruthless pursuit of perfection. I could become this person one day if I lost touch with reality and respect for others.
Dissatisfaction is contagious. Once I was set free from this person and was travelling on my own, I realized they had worn off on me because I began trying to perfect scenarios that were out of my control. The floodgates of perfectionism had been opened. But the more I tried to make my experience *just right*, the more things went wrong. The thing about perfectionism is its never enough.
On my second night at Clinique La Prairie, a 93-year-old wellness resort in Switzerland that is arguably in the business of perfecting health, I had a long conversation with the hotel receptionist. I didn’t tell him my impressions of Switzerland, but it was like he knew, because he started describing exactly what I’ve always felt: the country is as close to perfection as you get. The air is clear, the water is fresh, streets are clean and the standard of living is high (largely due to high taxes). I mentioned my anxiety; how my body feels immense fear when there is no reason to be afraid. He says this is a common issue in Switzerland where, in the absence of any real threat to their safety or health, people create reasons to be anxious. It’s our human nature to have a fight-or-flight response—in the wild we needed it to survive—but put us in a perfect environment and there is nowhere for our stress to go. So we create problems and maintain this sense that it’s never enough. If pursuing perfection only makes us more unhappy, why do we do it?
A few days prior, on my last night in Rome, a fellow journalist and I talked about the environments in which we grew up over a couple pizzas. When you’re a kid, your conception of what’s normal is created in your home. It’s only when you step outside you’re able to gauge where your family lies on the spectrum of dysfunction. I told her I grew up in pretty chaotic home environments, and so the biggest thing I’ve had to adapt to since everyone died is the silence. For the longest time after my mom died, peace made me uncomfortable. I always yearned for perfection—beauty, tranquility, order—because it was something my family lacked. What I didn’t realize is that once I arrived at perfection, it would only make me more unhappy.
So what explains the irony that perfection makes us so miserable? Perhaps it’s impermanence. No amount of wealth can guarantee you a flawless experience 24/7 for the rest of your life; there are too many uncontrolled variables in life. Whenever I’ve experienced perfection, what causes my subsequent distress is the realization I can’t have it forever. When I achieved the (or what diet culture considered at the time to be) the “perfect” body, I then became obsessively worried about maintaining it. The most “perfect” period of my life—when I lived in Barbados with my then-boyfriend—was soured by the death of my mom shortly after; a harsh reminder that such a care-free existence could never have continued indefinitely. Maybe some of the richest people are the least happy and the poorest people are the most happy because they both recognize the same truth: nothing lasts forever.
My first day in Switzerland, I was so allured by its perfection and fearful of my return to imperfect New York, that I changed my flight to stay a day longer. My immediate instinct was to latch onto the feeling and never let it go. But doing this made me anxious, because I didn’t want to lose it. Being grateful for what we have in this fleeting moment, rather than trying to make it better or last longer is easier said than done. But I think it could make us a lot happier. If we can appreciate that our joy won’t last forever, we can also find solace in recognizing our suffering won’t last forever too.
Best,
Anna
Reading 📖
A poem by Donna Ashworth that makes the case for not pursuing perfection.
JOY COMES BACK
When you finally realize
that joy is less fireworks
more firefly
less orchestra
more birdsong
she will come back much more often
for joy will not fight
with the fast pace of this life
she is not in the shiny or the new
she breathes in the basic
simmers in the simple
and dances in the daily to and fro
joy has been beckoning you
for many a year my friend
you were just too busy doing, to see
the very next time joy wraps
her quiet warmth around you
as the garden embraces your weary body
in its wildness
tip her a nod
she doesn’t stay long
but if you are a gracious host
joy comes back.
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🎤 Delia Cai’s profile of Chappell Roan and a rare interview with Sally Rooney.
🥭 As someone who’s been shopping at the Korean-owned fruit bodega Mr. Mango since 2017, I deeply appreciated this. (The shopkeeper called me a regular for the first time this week, I freaked!).
🧀 Order your next mac and cheese from… etsy?
Watching 📺
On my flight back from Switzerland, I took advantage of my computer breaking by watching movies that have been on my list but I haven’t gotten around to. One such film is Perfect Days, a 2023 Japanese drama that follows the daily life of a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. The public bathrooms were one of the many aspects of Japanese society I was impressed with when I visited earlier this year. But it never occurred to me how they get so spotless.
Cleaning toilets for a living is not an easy task, even just the thought of it admittedly makes me recoil. So you can imagine how uplifting it was to watch a man find joy in the mundanity of everyday life despite his often far-from-perfect work environment. As this review says, the film could easily have been a glorification of blue collar life, but instead, it’s “a lovely piece of late-career poetry that's equal parts meditative and melancholy,” writes Luke Goodsell.
Listening 🎧
One of my favorite non-fiction books I’ve read in recent years is all about South Korea’s pursuit of aesthetic perfection: Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw she was recently interviewed on my fave podcast, Vibe Check. Hu lived in Seoul as NPR’s Korea bureau chief, during which time she dove deep into beauty culture to conclude that South Korea is 5-10 years ahead of where North America is heading when it comes to skincare and body modifications. Her thesis was so convincing that I’m going this week to get a BTS look of the K-beauty industry myself.
Here were some highlights from their conversation:
Sam Sanders: “What if the question is not how I want my body to look but what do I want my body to do? What I want as a I age is for my body to continue to be mobile and healthy. The face skin can not carry my nephew, my cheekbones can not walk along the beach. My body does that. It’s more about thinking about what my body can do and not how it can look.”
Elise Hu: “Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. It’s not there to be looked at, it’s there for what it can do and feel.”
“While it can alleviate anxiety individually to look better, it’s not good collectively. The solution to homophobia isn’t to make everyone straight, the solution to racism isn’t to make everyone white, the solution to fat-phobia isn’t to make everyone skinny, and the solution to lookism isn’t to make everyone interchangeably pretty. It’s actually the opposite: to detangle our appearance from our worth, to celebrate diversity and difference.” Elise Hu.
Snacking 🍌
I’ll admit, I was nervous when I found out Clinique La Prairie serves a gluten-, sugar- and lactose-free menu, partially because I find restrictions can be triggering, but mainly because I assumed it would mean flavor-less food. However, after a week of carb- and dairy-loading in Italy, CLP’s vegetable-forward approach was just what my body was craving. Better yet, the food was delicious. I have been to many wellness resorts in my time and I can say with confidence this was the most delicious gluten/sugar/lactose-free food I’ve ever tasted. What I appreciated most was that the meals didn’t feel restrictive in any way—all the macros were present and in decent portions, and there was always something sweet. The presentation was as beautiful as the view from my private balcony where I chose to eat almost all my meals (even when it rained, which was most of my stay).
The best meal I ate this week reminded me of Switzerland because it was with another luxury European hotel, the Corinthia Grand Hotel Astoria Brussels, but here in New York. It took place in the beautiful Delvaux on Fifth Ave overlooking Central Park (through the scaffolding of course) among luxury handbags and impressively large Baobab candles. Michelin-starred chefs Christophe Hardiquest and David Martin served Belgian excellence in the form of the finest seafood. I’ve been to Belgium once when I was a kid but couldn’t remember what exactly Belgium food is (save for Belgian waffles and Belgian chocolate). My guess was that it’s French-meets-German and I was pretty spot on. What I didn’t realize is how much seafood is involved. Of the eight courses we were served, my favorite was the salmon two ways with nori, cottage cheese cream and Gueuze beer. The desserts were also a hit—a sake masu cream with berries and matcha, and cafe liegeois, a Belgian spin on the French dish with Tonka bean, chocolate, beer and coffee cream.