Enjoy your flaws, being perfect ain't all it's cracked up to be

Perfection: that most elusive and addictive of qualities. Do you lie awake at night worrying whether you were flawless at work whilst using the accounting system? (I know my flatmate does) Or is your quest more about searching for Mr/Miss Right? Whatever it is, there are few of us who don't suffer from the curse of perfectionism.
I know I'm a hopeless case. My own very high standards at work have left me feeling somewhat inadequate, with a sense that I should be doing something more. And it nags at me. My friends tell me that I shouldn't worry about it so much but that's easier said than done. For many, this phenomenon is closely tied to achievement and success but remains at the heart of being truly creative.
The strive for perfection is always there - there's never any right answer or incontrovertible fact. It's why creative people are always insecure, I should know. Besides, Van Gogh cut his ear off, most of our great writers were addicts of one kind or another, the list goes on. But let me tell you, it almost pales into insignificance in the light of sporting expectations.
‘England Expects'. It expects, when it comes to every major international football tournament the team qualifies for - proof that they're not just a bunch of overpaid nancy boys. Losing creates an intense backlash of loss and scorn - mostly scorn - whilst winning causes ecstatic jubilation and suddenly the team are perfect. Of course, merely not being the best can get you labelled as boring and dismissed as not being worth watching.
Perfection is personal, too; it's taken me 10 years of relationships to finally be happy with what I have, even though it's not all joy and laughter. There is no such thing as the perfect man or woman and it's usually the flaws that make a the person who they are. I used to be riddled with worries and fears that my boyfriend wasn't doing this right or wasn't doing enough of that, but it really doesn't matter.
All of this is without considering the multi-million pound industry of beauty perfection, a whole topic in itself. Flaws are just nature's way, it makes life interesting. As Agent Smith in the Matrix said:“The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”

Let a little sadness in, too much happiness is bad for you

The Buddhists have a saying: to know great joy you must first know suffering (or words to that effect), balance to put it another way. So how the hell did we end up with a Prozac nation where being anything other than happy is seen as a mental disorder?
I’m not talking about people being depressed because that extreme is equally bad, but simply those who appear vaguely downcast or serious. A classic example of this attitude was my old workmates who always used to get concerned by the serious look of concentration on my face. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t go to work to be happy yet we all seem to expect it as a pre-requisite. Reed is currently marketing itself as the surefire way to week-long job satisfaction – no job can offer that.
Then there’s my personal favourite: relationships. Hollywood has a lot to answer for with its happy ever afters but I can tell you from experience that it’s the fastest way to becoming a bag of neuroses. There’s no chance of life resembling Disney or any number of chick flicks. Sorry girls, but that Mr Perfect doesn’t exist. All these romantic notions are all very well and good but don’t you think that being ecstatically happy would get rather wearing at times.
Music is trying its best to be an antidote despite the ssuspicion or mockery piled on most ‘serious’ bands (Radiohead and Nirvana to name but two). But nothing compares to the criticism piled on Emo, the grim music almost exclusively for teenagers. The Daily Mail attacked it with a gusto normally reserved for Muslim immigrants, accusing it of being responsible for making teenagers suicidal purely due to it’s less than happy nature. They can’t seem to deal with the fact that these same kids want something they can relate their daily lives to – lives which aren’t all roses and sunshine.
On my desk at work there’s a photo of a minibus bearing the slogan ‘chant Hare Krishna and be happy’ – if only life was that simple. The Buddhists have got it right; besides, I don’t want to be happy all the time – it’s not healthy and also tiring. If you want to be happy all the time, then that’s OK, but you’ll feel so much better if you let a little sadness in your life.