A Frog Somewhere

I am One with the great Silence,
and I am the calling-forth:
The echo of “Who am I?”
In the stillness of “I AM.”

Again and again, my assertion;
My falling over myself, responding.
Can it be? How can I be?
And why at this time, now?

(      )

But for every call to righteousness—
For every cry for being—
There is a foggy, sleeping pond;

And a frog somewhere,
I’d like to think,
who knows not one thing about me.

I wrote in my last post about perfectionism. I would like to continue that discussion here.

The usual story I tell when asked about my intellectual history is that my interest in science originated from my love for the woods around my childhood home in Hudson, Massachusetts. I was fascinated by the sights and sounds of the New England deciduous forest. I loved rocks and minerals, trees and frogs, and I wanted to learn everything about them.

When I studied biology in high school, I loved it; but they asked us to take some results from chemistry for granted, such as the details of the Krebs cycle or photosynthesis. This didn’t sit well with me: how could I claim to understand biology if I didn’t understand the “facts” on which it is based? When I studied chemistry, they told us to take some results from physics for granted, such as electron orbital shapes. When I studied physics, they told us to take some results from mathematics for granted. When I studied mathematics, they told us that we have to take axioms and logical rules of inference for granted; and when I thought about this further, everything started to unravel a bit. I then spent some time with philosophy and mysticism, and now the whole picture is coalescing again.

That is the usual story. But the blog sees the inside scoop 😉

The more complete story is that while the descent from the forest to the study of physics and mathematics was certainly influenced by ongoing intellectual curiosity, it was also motivated by the desire to be seen as intelligent or successful. Physics and mathematics are generally regarded as some of the hardest subjects, so part of my reason for studying them in college was just to prove that I could.

It’s hard to say when exactly perfectionism crept into my thinking. I was singled out as intelligent from a very young age by my parents and by metrics in school, such as grades and awards, and eventually by class rank and GPA in high school, as well as roles like class president, team captain, etc. It became a part of my social identity within my family and among my friends to be relatively successful at everything I pursued.

It is fairly clear to me that my family circumstance also contributed to my problems with perfectionism. I am one of ten children of my parents, and as such I may have received less individual attention than I would have in a smaller family. Perhaps as a result of being such a large group of people, it sometimes felt like we all were implicitly competing for our parents’ and each others’ attention and approval. This only reinforced the sense of an existential need to be exceptional.

I can see that this implicit competition drove both my insecurities and my goals. My insecurities growing up were mostly about my stature, since I was always a tall and very lanky boy. I didn’t have the strength or build of my older brother, David. I also didn’t have the confidence and fierce, go-getter mentality of my older sister, Carmen. I don’t think I really compared myself with my younger siblings in the same way. But I see that my “angle” toward being different or “better than” my older brother and sister was to be the smartest or most accomplished, especially in a “hard” STEM field; and hence this became one of my goals.

I think the culture at Harvard may have caused the most noticeable shift in my thinking from genuine intellectual curiosity to insecurity and perfectionism. It was a highly competitive environment, and also one in which I was not the most successful or talented student for the first time in my life. I found myself in an existential crisis of sorts, desiring to set myself apart from others but not knowing how to do so. I fell into a depression in these years (not at all for this reason alone, though—there was a confluence of factors, including a difficult breakup).

I had to face all these unwittingly held attitudes and narratives critically after I had a manic episode and subsequent nervous breakdown that lasted for months. It was a turning point in my life when I distilled so many insights about the nature of my experience of the world, and then after a month’s high, fell hard into existentially distressing groundlessness. Emerging from that chaotic chasm with the help of therapists and psychiatrists allowed me to confront the unhealthy patterns in my thinking that had slowly accumulated over many years. I am still confronting them now.

Thus concludes my backstory regarding perfectionism. Those readers who also suffer from perfectionism may be asking, “But what can be done about it?”

Well for one thing, I try to keep these posts to a medium length, so rest assured that I have more to say about it in the future. But for starters, try writing your own backstory regarding perfectionism. What does “perfection” even mean to you? Why? What historical factors in your life prevent you from accepting less than that standard of perfection?

Start by writing the first words that come to your head, and then edit them; and then edit them again and again until they feel good; but remember that they won’t feel perfect 🙂 And let that be a meditation itself.

And then, when you’re done, sit back and think about that frog somewhere who knows not one damn thing about you. Breathe in, let it fill you, and let it all be alright.