You know how they speak about the sticker collections that people never end up using as kids? That, to me, always reminded me of a term I learnt later on in life called perfectionism. I never quite understood what made me feel like I needed to be one, a perfectionist. All I knew was that if there was anything that came out of this “perfectionist” behaviour, it was frustration. Several sketchbooks were torn because the drawings in them looked too mediocre, multiple tries at making a bed because it seemed too shabby to me, and an unhealthy amount of ironing of shirts because the wrinkles just seemed unbearable to look at.
Sadly, I discovered this perfectionist behaviour in myself only after I told my friend about my love for writing and how much I enjoyed it. She asked me why I stopped, and that made me wonder, why did I stop? “Because every piece wasn’t the best”, I felt myself answer. The first ever poem I wrote was in first grade, and I went on writing till the twelfth grade. Random diary entries, articles for school magazines, opinions about the world that only I cared about and reviews of what I felt about movies that I had watched. I wrote for eleven years. Eleven years of writing and I stopped because each one didn’t feel like an article straight out of The Hindu. Foolish, in retrospect.
So I told this inner voice in the back of my mind to buzz off and listened to my friend instead. I lifted my pen and ignored every thought and wrote – “I was told to write. Free mind writing so to say. That seems so stressful though. I constantly feel the need to make sense.” And I stopped. That’s all. I wrote four lines and decided that was enough. The perfectionist in me got irritated and I shut my book and went onto taking a nap instead. A few hours later I was lazing in bed, on my laptop, mindlessly scrolling through pinterest and I stumbled across a quote-
“A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what it was built for.” I can’t believe I’m one of those people who listens to motivational quotes. But it stayed with me long enough for me to open my notebook again. And apparently long enough for me to end up writing this. Maybe those precious stickers you guard so fiercely, waiting for the perfect moment, only mean something once you finally start using them.