Consultation on a fragile balance

She sank into the chair, her eyes fixed on a crack in the wall as if searching for answers, her fingers tapping anxiously on the desk. She wondered if anything in her life could ever go right. Her life, her relationships – everything felt like it was spiraling out of control, and she didn’t know how to prioritize or fix it. The straw that broke the camel’s back was her job interview. She had wanted it to go perfectly well. She had rehearsed the words she was going to say, only to get there and start stammering. She didn’t know what exactly had gone wrong. She had envisioned a smooth interview and had already been planning how to celebrate its success in her mind. But the opposite happened!

Immediately after the interview, she went to the restroom to cry her eyes out. She wondered why the opposite of the good things she envisioned for herself always seemed to happen. She left the restroom with groggy eyes and a tired face. Along the hallway, she met a kind woman who inquired about the problem.

The woman had a warm, steady gaze that seemed to pierce through her chaos. After listening to her explanation, the woman placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and said, “Perfectionism is a deadly disease, but defeatism is a more deadly disease. Seek a balance in everything you do. Don’t strive for perfection, and don’t succumb to defeatism.” With that, she left with a smile on her face.

She didn’t fully grasp the woman’s words. She went back home, locked herself in her room, and reflected on what the woman had said. She tried to link it to the situations in her life. She realized she was suffering from the two deadly diseases the woman mentioned. She always wanted things to be perfect, and once they weren’t, she gave up.

She recalled how she had given up on her Madrasah because she failed once. She remembered how she left her Quran lessons because she wasn’t getting perfect remarks from her tutor. If only she had embraced failure as growth and let go of the need for control! If only she had remembered she was human, and perfection belonged to the Almighty!

By Dhikrullah Rosheedah