by Normand Lepine
I am Nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I am perfect.
– Dandi Daley Mackall, Love Rules
Sometimes I wonder why I even come here. It’s so depressing on days like this. I don’t have my regular energy after a long day and longer week. Then I look around and feel so little compared to the bigger bulls. I’m a bit more wrinkled these days and a bit thinner and greyer on top but I really don’t look my age. Still, today I definitely feel it.
Granted, I’ve never been more than average in size but that didn’t hold me back. I was very competitive when I played football and rugby with the rest of my herd. But these guys are such gym rats it’s disgusting. They never seem to be content with what they lift or how big their muscles are. They all want to impress each other but are they really just impressing themselves? I come to the gym to stay fit and to maintain my health. They come to the gym to become the perfect specimens.
Which reminds me of some mentoring I did at work earlier today. I have some young employees who remind me of myself at that stage in my career. A couple in particular are creating some real challenges in meeting our client commitments. They seem to write and rewrite their reports and are never on time submitting to the editors or with meeting schedules. I remember feeling the urge to get everything perfect when I was young. One day, I missed yet another deadline and got a call from the client explaining how I had put him in a bind with his executives. He made me realize that my work was always high quality and it was more important for me to keep him moving forward with his projects than worrying about perfection.
That was a turning point in my career. Realizing the difference between quality and perfection enabled me to get more work done, generate more results and maintain a very high level of satisfaction with my clients. I shared that story and some coaching about how to recognize the difference between work that has reached a level of quality meeting everyone’s needs and the quest for perfection.
A loud trumpet interrupts my reverie. I see the biggest bulls clustered in the free weight section. The grunts and competition to lift more than anyone else reminds me of the sometime foolish and empty quest for perfection.
I think I’ll just go home now. My wife says she thinks I’m perfect.
Normand Lepine is a father to elephants and writer of dreams. By day he works as a consulting executive with more than 30 years of experience providing service to clients and mentoring to colleagues. This is his first published flash fiction.