To search for perfection is all very well, but to look for Heaven, is to live here in Hell. ~ Sting, “Consider Me Gone.”

This close to perfect!

When I was studying Qigong, sifu would watch my forms and walk up to me, smile and say while holding his finger and thumb a little bit apart, “you’re this close to perfect.” That always stung, I mean I was working really hard, was one of the best students in my class and it just seemed I could never get there. I moved from it feeling like a dig, to thinking it was a tool he was using to motivating me to work harder, to laughing when he said it because I truly didn’t give a shit. Who knows, maybe philosophically that was what he was hoping for all along. What was important to me were the benefits I was gaining from the training both in perspective and physically.

In many aspects in my life, I’m this close to perfect. And honestly I get it, I’m an alien impersonating being a human. And before you jump on the phone to this guy.

I don’t mean I’m from another planet, although my mother has joked my whole life that the aliens left me on the doorstep. I’m not normal, I’ve known that my entire life. This is the kind of self-consideration that can lead to poor self-esteem and loneliness and that was very true of me in my younger years. At some point, after addiction, recovery, clinical levels of depression and a lot of hard work, I ended up coming to the conclusion that, as the Dude said in The Big Lebowski,

It’s such a huge thing to accept and become comfortable with yourself and who you are. That’s why I no longer care how close I am to perfect in other people’s eyes. What matters, is if I am adhering to my values, if I’m giving my best and if I am getting what I want from what I’m doing. I don’t do things like others, so I’m likely never going to be seen as perfect by others and that’s just fine.

The best example is my professional life, I work as a dean. When you say dean people typically go to one of two images. Either some graying, frail older guy in a suit jacket with patches on the elbows, or Dean Wormer in the movie Animal House screaming you’re on double secret probation.

The conventional wisdom in higher education is that as an administrator you need to be some type of constantly professional emotionless robot. If the system shits on you, smile and do the work. If faculty don’t do their job, smile and do the work. If faculty scream at you, call you names, spread rumors, just smile and do the work. And most of my colleagues do just that and eating that much shit leads to these jobs being unbelievably stressful. A long time ago I decided that this particularly ideology just didn’t work for me, so I do not work like an emotionless robot and I demand to be treated like a person.

So this means I demand respect, demand to be treated like another human being and if disrespect is delivered then disrespect is received. It also means that if something doesn’t make sense I question it or disagree, regardless of the title of the person who isn’t making sense. I’ve tried very hard, my whole career to make what I do about one simple thing, the primary purpose that a college exists, to serve the needs of students. In this as well, I’m almost perfect, but over a nearly 40 year career being nearly perfect means I’ve helped a hell of a lot of students. It also means I’ve pissed off a lot of my bosses and a good number of faculty, but they’re not the people I report to nor care about their opinion, I have always reported to my students and the only feedback I need is whether or not I have helped them.

What’s allowed me to adopt this attitude and belief is being comfortable with who I am, what I do and why I do it. That comfort with self was a huge step in me beginning and solidifying my journey to be happier in life. I hope you have or can find that same self-comfort, it will help you have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane