Yes, I always strive for perfection in what I do. So does my darling partner.

We're obviously doomed, but between us we run an excellent business :)

I have had second thoughts since I started this string. Who am I to tell people what is a healthier goal? Maybe for some people it is best to strive for perfection. I was selfishly thinking of me when I wrote it wasn’t good to strive for perfection because my father’s dissatisfaction made him difficult to live with. However, had he striven for perfection and not been a pain in the ass when he didn’t get there it would have been better.

I like the story about the two Buddhist monks who approached a stream. A woman wanted to get across but was afraid of the current. One of the monks picked her up and carried her across. They walked and the other monk said, “Our order forbids touching women. Yet you carried her.”

“I put her down when we got to the other side of the stream. Why don’t you?”

I tell stories like that, but I don’t put things down. I don’t do right and then revel in guilt. That doesn’t help anything.

Look up “How Much Land does a Man Need” by Tolstoy. You can find it on the net.

My wife is an intelligent person who helps keep me in touch with reality. When I lament my failure to achieve more with my obvious talents she said, “You made yourself comfortable.” At least we can be comfortable with what we’ve done. If we’re sitting on Death Row we can be comfortable with the thought that we didn’t kill more people than we did.

Foxy, you sound like a great Mum. I wish I had been a better Dad, but I’m not going to have another chance at it.

Cakers, you can divide people up into victors and victims. Good for you. I have been both and sometimes have been neither. I also divide people up into categories but feel it is wrong when I do it.

Sentiments voiced in a post depend very much on whether it is daylight or dark, whether we have slept well, our digestion etc. They can't be over 350 words.

Davidf,
There is/was nothing wrong with challenging a perception mine, yours or anyone else’s. At the risk of sounding trite it is an ancient and wise thing to do. Buddha advised us that the path to wisdom begins with challenging one’s most sacred views, like wise Socrates said we should challenge all beliefs especially our most tightly held ones. Amongst other things I surmise Buddha was advocating humility by self examination and Socrates was advising against being static in our views.

In my last post perhaps I should have simply expressed my reasoning rather than the context albeit open to change.
Goals to me must be both objective and challenging. I reason that perfection in what you do is objective, clear almost measurable. On the other hand how do I objectively define, measure what is the best I can do until I’ve done it? To me this implies a lesser vaguer target … almost building in an excuse for lesser commitment/effort. In the context of extreme one off crisis counselling this is a luxury that neither you nor the caller can afford. It is only by this all in total commitment that at the end of the call be it 10 minutes or in rare cases 4hrs both can be sure that you *did* in fact do the best you could.
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t do better in the future that’s the learning process.

Then again, David the ‘boots and all’ commitment can be misperceived by many as intimidating/unyielding.

My adopted dad too was racked with feeling of inadequacy guilt partially because he survived the Burma railway and because he tended to measure himself by others…I don’t.
I helped raise our brood to be individuals be selective of what aspects of their role models to adopt including us. Proudly they are all fiercely individual, thinkers with their mother’s grounded sociability but sadly they all have my bizarre sense of the ridiculous… Family 'debates' can be intense and interesting. I guess they’re not perfect either. :-)

My view is we are here to be the best we, as individuals, can be.

Cakers post illustrates a point which I have always valued and been at lengths to express,

that we are born with free will and the “joy of life” will be found from exercising that “free will”,

rather than fearing to make and take those choices

or worse,

being denied the exercise of free will, as it were for so many millions of my parents and grand parents generations, from being labeled by class or worse, by the edicts of political despots.

I am guided by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I think try to aspire to clamber up, with I hope some success (but I am not sure how well a “conscious” assault on Maslow’s pyramid qualifies).

Certainly I have, in the past couple of years particularly, discovered the absolute pure joy to be gained from what Maslow described as “success of offspring”.

Where, having strived myself to be responsible for the ethical development of the two children who I fathered, I now know them as adults and observe as they question and answer for themselves, what they should strife for.

My children, being independent adults with strong characters, strong values and generous spirits, freely choose to keep me close in their lives from a sense of love, not duty and that, is certainly high among the things which are well worth striving for.

And I have been very very close to someone trying to grapple with the agonising burden carried from "failure of offspring", from which they have been brutal in their judgment of themselves and critical of their own (self perceived) failings.

CJMorgans post reminds me, because he mentions “successful business” of a Margaret Thatcher quote regarding the fundamentals of life

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.”

Rather than being remembered as a “successful accountant” I would prefer to be remembered as an ethical and maybe even an individual, unique or eccentric one.

So perhaps that is what I am now striving for

A deep and meaningful epitaph

Dear Examinator,

What gets people to call a crisis centre? How do they hear about it?

If I felt my future was bleak, nobody cared whether I lived or died and I had no enthusiasm for living suicide would be a reasonable act for me.

While writing this post my wife has been tossing paper airplanes at me so suicide would be an unreasonable act for me.

Do you feel suicide is ever justified?

What is perfection?
What is is the goal?
What way we should follow to perfection, to our goal,-s?
What is the cost to perfection?
The cost for who? Are we alone? For how long?
While we must be ready for hard work and sacrifications for our goals we must know that this is only a small step forward BUT it could be a small step backward!
It should be good if we understand, if we accept that the perfection is perfect only a moment in a specifc time and place.
As everything change, as new ideas, new needs have created, we must know that the perfection (as a goal and as a way) change too.
It is not bad if we leave a little space for a different kind of perfections, if we leave little space to unknown god, if we leave a window or a door unlocked in the back side.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide