What has struck me all my life is that we don’t like perfectionists in this society. Yes, big stars, artists – they can be perfectionists. Femke Bol, Gaudí, Madonna, Hans Klok. They can worry, be on top of every detail, every comma, and every file. Arjen Lubach recently said that Jochem Myjer times his shows down to the second, I also mention a Pieter Omtzigt here – everyone loves them.
But the closer perfectionists get, the more annoying we find them. Colleagues, friends, your boss, or even worse: your husband! Or woman! They really shouldn’t be perfectionists.
Then they are called control freaks. Know-it-alls. Stress chickens. And they are “difficult to deal with.” Star. Unsociable. Whiners. People who “can’t let go,” who are “on top of everything.” People roll their eyes behind their backs.
There are also all kinds of courses to become a ‘perfectionist/control freak’. It’s unbelievable when you see how the control freak is hated. ‘How do you overcome the control freak within yourself’, ‘living with a control freak’, or the ‘letting go of control’ course – which costs 75 euros, by the way. Like it’s a disease, if you want to keep control. No, you have to let go of everything. You have to be relaxed and everything will work out fine.
Open heart surgery
Lately I’ve been thinking more and more: why? Why do we hate perfectionists so much? Isn’t it nice to have perfectionists around? For example, during your open heart surgery. Who do you want at your bedside? A control freak who insists on the details, or a dude with a joint who lets things go?
For twelve years we had a Prime Minister who laughed relaxed all day long, who “had to check it out”, “couldn’t remember anything about it for a while”, relax!, and look what that has brought us. We needed a bunch of perfectionists to bring the Benefits Affair to the surface. Who did not rest until the bottom stone was up.
Take it easy, people often say to me. It doesn’t always have to be perfect. Better a six without stress than a seven without life, a dear acquaintance said recently. Let it go.
Then I think: why should we let go? I want to hold on to things until it is right. Do you really think that a train would still run, a rocket would go to the moon, cartons of fresh milk would still appear in the shops without perfectionist control freaks?
The people who say that you should let it go have certainly never had someone come over who had to repair something, an accountant who pays salaries on time, an engineer who charges a parking garage just as long as it does not collapse.
I don’t want sixes without stress, I just want a ten. It is precisely loose ends that cause you stress. Structure and control keep us healthy. Without perfectionists, everything falls apart. If everyone is relaxed, nothing will ever happen again.
A hell
Of course, I understand that people prefer not to have perfectionists around them. Because they confront you with your own labyrinthine nature. That’s why it’s great that Pieter Omtzigt and Jochem Myjer are perfectionists, but it’s hell when your boss whines that the work really needs to be improved, or your girlfriend. We don’t want perfectionists too close. Perfectionists mercilessly show us that we are failing.
So yes, they are “difficult to deal with” – because you don’t have your affairs in order. They don’t trust anyone – they have every reason to. They prefer to do everything themselves – because you don’t. And no, they don’t let go. Because otherwise it will be lost.
There is really only one downside to perfectionists. And that is that they usually suffer from it themselves. They are often overstressed, have burnouts, and have short fuses – not surprising when you carry the entire relaxed humanity on your shoulders and have to fight the battle alone.
And that’s also why I thought: let’s put perfectionists in the spotlight more often. Let’s support them, instead of cursing them. Perhaps they will be less stressed if they get the recognition they deserve.
Loose screw
Because the control freaks remove the spelling mistakes from our texts, make the grilles, search in your car until they find the screw that was loose. Saying: ‘I’m going to help you’ when you had already been given up on by that other oncologist – perfectionists are our heroes. I don’t want fewer perfectionists, I want more. There should be courses on how to become a control freak, instead of how to unlearn it.
I would therefore like to say to all perfectionists: don’t let yourself be fooled, we need you. And to all other people?
The more perfectionists there are, the more you can let go.