Everyone defines their high school years differently. My teacher said she barely remembers her high school years- that’s how insignificant they were. However, I hold steadfast to the idea that nothing is truly insignificant, we just perceive it to be that way. The dust particles that float around your screen while you read this have been around since the beginning of the universe, as matter is neither created nor destroyed. Is something as dust still as insignificant as you had previously thought?
Similarly, nothing you do or feel is insignificant, even if your own mind convinces you so. The feeling of incompetence originates from that lowly self-perception, the feeling that you’re “not good enough” no matter what you do. Perfectionists, whom I once was, often perceive themselves this way. This past year, I had been doing well in school. However, reading my 2:45 AM journal entry, you would never think so. This is what goes on inside the mind of a perfectionist:
For the past year, I can’t help but feel like a failure and disappointment to myself. I assumed everyone feels that way from time to time, but all the time? It’s 2:45 AM right now on a school night, and I can’t go to sleep. My brain is like a computer I can’t shut down, a computer that I always think has malfunctioned; calculating everything I could have done better on and I need to do from now on. I’m not suffering from insomnia, so what’s keeping me up at night? And at 2:45 AM, it hit me.
I’ve always been driven by passion and interest. This year, it’s about exactly what mark I need to maintain in my school courses. I should be chasing growth, but when your reputation and academic future relies on a mark you get, a lot of the times, you end up not chasing growth, but perfection. Many times, I show up to class not to learn for the sake of gaining knowledge and inspiration, but because I need to know whatever lesson to do excellent on Thursday’s quiz… I need to get this mark on this thing to get into this program so i can live a decent life. It’s ridiculous… this vicious cycle of attaining perfection.
In a digitized world, the most outstanding and fastest technologies have warped our day-to-day lives, plugged into our heads and clinging to our legs wherever we go. Incarnates of perfection are paraded on every store-front we walk by, plastered on instagram posts we scroll by, flaunted by every self-conceited, seemingly self-fulfilled person… and our subconscious takes note. Constantly nibbling at the information we’re being fed, a USB feeding us file after file… the constant whirring, beeping, and ringing of a….
machine…?
In today’s world, is that what our existence essentially must account to?
It’s easy to blame societal influence for the flaws in our self-perception. However, it’s not “today’s world” that decides anything- it’s you. In the midst of that night, I looked to the specks of dust dancing in the moon’s spotlight. The universe is constantly evolving and changing seasons, and finally, I began to accept myself as that way too. Never forget, that your life changes only when you do.
