When I was a kid, I always made sure to step over the cracks in the sidewalk. “Don’t step on the crack or you’ll break your mother’s back” was a common rhyme in my youth. I followed that advice to the letter, but not because I actually thought I was going to break my mother’s back. See, if I stepped on the crack with my left foot, I had to step on the next one with my right foot. In the exact same part of the foot. If I didn’t do this, I would be teeming with anxiety until I could find another crack to step on, and only then could I get relief. Eventually, I figured it best to avoid the cracks altogether, so that’s what I did.
Sidewalks weren’t the only places where this odd behavior showed up. If my right middle finger touched a table, I would also have to touch it with my left middle finger. If something got in my right eye and I rubbed it with my right hand, I would have to do the same with my left eye and left hand. You get the idea - I was obsessed with symmetry. I don’t know exactly how or when it started, but as far as I know it’s always been a part of who I am. As I got older things started to get worse, and one day while playing high school football I noticed my shoulder pads didn’t fit quite right…
It dawned on me then and there - my body itself wasn’t symmetrical. My left pectoral was bigger than my right, and to me at the time, this was the biggest blow of them all. Whereas I could remedy the asymmetries from the past with a hand touch or a poke, this I could do nothing about; I couldn’t change my anatomy and genetics. I had absolutely no control. Thus began my journey with OCD and perfectionism - a process I now like to call “Asymmetrical Assimilation”.
I’ve taken quite an inventory since those high school football days: my left pectoral is bigger than my right, my right latissimus is bigger than my left, my left bicep is bigger than my right, and so on and so forth. I am keenly aware of every last bodily imperfection. I’ve trained for years in an attempt to even this out, but to no avail - it turns out it actually is my anatomy and genetics. For years, this bothered me so much it often made me sick, and I started to exhibit some rather strange behaviors. I would sit around all day poking my chest with some half-conscious hope it would somehow help. This is obviously a physical impossibility, but I couldn’t help myself. Just like when I was a kid on the sidewalk, I had to do it. Choice wasn’t a part of the equation.
Why do I bring this up? To tell the internet my strangest secrets hoping it will free me from my insanity? Not quite. The truth is it took a long time, but I’ve made peace with this part of myself. There’s no cure-all or hypnosis that will make this magically go away for me; however, I have found a solution. I’ve learned how to live with my “little demons” and see them with a new perspective. I’ve learned how to accept my body for what it is, and I’ve been able to extract significant meaning from my experience with this particular brand of mental torment.
How, you ask? By facing it head on, day after day, year after year. I didn’t let it stop me from training. I didn’t let it stop me from doing anything. I started touching things with one hand and leaving the other alone (imagine!). Slowly but surely, I started getting used to it. I had to rewire my brain so that it knew that asymmetry wasn’t going to kill me, that I wasn’t ever going to be perfect, nor did I ever need to be. Most importantly, I had to learn that it was okay. That I was okay, even if I had these crazy thoughts. It didn’t mean I was insane, and it didn’t mean I was less than anybody else. It simply meant I was human and had my own particular set of nuances and oddities.
In the circles I frequent, most people tell me their greatest character flaw is perfectionism. Boy, do I relate! I’d go so far to say that most of us deal with perfectionism in some way, and how could we not? We’re inundated with perfection at every turn - perfect smiles on billboards, perfect figures in magazines, perfect lives in social media feeds. It’s like we’re trying to transcend our humanity, and in many ways we are (and that’s a good thing, but more on that in a later article). That doesn’t mean that any of this is actually attainable in the here and now. Humanity is dirty, grimy and filled with imperfection, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. This reminds me of a quote in the Dao De Jing:
“True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself.”
We become perfect when we accept ourselves exactly as we are. I still poke my chest. I still touch things with my left hand after touching them with my right. I still do these things, but not nearly as often, and these behaviors don’t consume me. They’re just a part of me, and if that doesn’t suit you, you can stop reading at any time. My message tonight is to not only be yourself, but to embrace your most flawed parts. Be weird. Face it. Own it. I think you’ll find yourself more in touch with the person you’ve always known you could be - this has certainly been true for me.