Motherhood killed off my dangerous pursuit of perfectionism

As a teen I suffered from the trap of perfectionism - it was a prison and I was so hard on myself. I never want to return to that former life.

Perfectionism is a prison of tightness. An attempt at control within a world you cannot. Picture: istock

Ah, perfection. Do you strive for it, crave it, demand it of others? Well, have I got news for you – perfection is soulless, airless, suspicious and dull. Yet we humans constantly endeavour to attain it, not realising how damaging that quest can be. The concept is as old as the Bible and as new as AI. Perfectionism is God’s wrath against Eve. It is the AI-generated text that doesn’t breathe. The teenage girl locked in a punishing cycle of top mark pursuit and failure trauma. The anorexic striving for the body that’s slowly killing them. The person with a supreme and unforgiving self-focus. Perfectionism is a prison of tightness. An attempt at control within a world you cannot.

Evolution in the robotic age is pushing us ever onwards towards the impossibly perfect, but that way anxiety lies, for none of us is perfect. Our tolerance for mistakes is lessening as the robots sneak their way into our domain. A celebration of messily imperfect humanity feels urgent with the relentless rise of the machine in our lives.

Perfectionism is about a fear of being judged, of failing. Yet life’s journey is about making mistakes. Overcoming them, learning from them. And the path to happiness lies in embracing looseness, flaws, mess. In letting go and having a laugh, in embracing a lightness of being. I know, because as a teen I suffered from the trap of perfectionism. It wouldn’t let me loosen, unwind, relax. I was so hard on myself. Furiously trying to control the image I presented to the world and so afraid of the real, messy, flawed and fragile reality underneath.

Perfectionism is the teenager locked in a punishing cycle of top mark pursuit and failure trauma.

Traditionally girls have been conditioned to be good, quiet, submissive, perfect – prisons that can make females, who are anything but this, feel they’re inherently wrong. I needed carting off to Perfectionism Rehab, but there was one thing that finally killed off its destructive impulses. Motherhood. In the chaos of parenthood I learned to loosen up, let go, for it’s a world you can’t control, and it’s extremely damaging to expect perfection of anyone else. I’m now a perfectionist in recovery; I never want to return to that former life.

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made,” Immanuel Kant declared. Yet AI aims for perfection. It’s inhuman, and it’s ingrained within us to be inherently suspicious of the too-perfect. Recently encountered on X, joyous relief from academics clocking mistakes and awkward phrasings in student papers, which signalled that they couldn’t possibly be the product of AI. The implication being: this work is deeply, endearingly human, and should be celebrated.

Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki rages against the use of artificial intelligence in any walk of life. “I’m utterly disgusted … I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” AI is a suicidal trajectory towards lifeless perfectionism that’s sending a chill through every field of creativity, publishing included. I say this as a new database reveals Meta has stolen 11 of my books to train its AI model, including my most recent novel Wing, which had been out just a few short months before being thieved. Wow. Fast work, bro.

To counter AI’s airless perfectionism we’re seeing a rising celebration of the messily human; a counterculture that refutes machine-aided perfection. A hip new social media platform called Perfectly Imperfect aims to smash the algorithmic suggestions of more established outlets. It is proudly anti-algorithmic and human driven, and it feels endearingly, quirkily anti-perfect. It’s capturing the zeitgeist of these fightback times as the machines and algorithms roar at us. As the late Pope Francis said, “Listen, perfection does not exist. A human being cannot attain it, because we are simply not made to be fulfilled here.” Perfection is an impossibility, an illusion, a lie. And, well, kind of boring. You have been warned.