By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Waiting for Gaudreau
Monty Python met adventures seeking the Holy Grail, but none like I have pursuing perfection.
My frustration meeting a standard that can’t exist — If no human is perfect, how can a human know what perfect is? — reached a boiling point when I overheated oatmeal. Healthy glop everywhere. I needed answers. That or have someone make them up.
If you think calling creative people “creatives” is, well, creative, I have a new Holy Grail for you: University of Ottawa psychology professor Patrick Gaudreau has coined the term “excellencism” hoping to peddle it as a nostrum for those fried trying to be perfect. Tracey Dennis-Tiwary, Ph.D., another pop psychology shill writing in The Washington Post, has joined him. Up first: establish need.
“Research,” she writes, “is unequivocal.” What kind of research? Who conducted it? By what methodology? For what purposes? I was being too perfectionistic. If two doctors say it — Ph.D’s no less — not is undisputed.
“There is little upside,” TDT writes, “to perfectionism. The relentless pursuit of flawlessness can lead to low self-worth, depressive and anxiety disorders, high stress in the face of failure, even suicide.”
Many things can lead to these fates. My own experience being perfect has led to delusion and oatmeal everywhere, so my hook’s been baited. Excellencism it is for me.
Let’s work backwards to appreciate word torture to its fullest. “Excel” means to be exceptionally good or proficient at an activity. The word expands into “excellence,” or the quality of excelling. Already “excel,” the taproot, is being diluted.
Now add -ism — a practice, system or philosophy. That’s another suffix or layer removed or added. Heard of “establish”? What does “antidisestablshmentarianism mean in this age? Or any? Want it really bad? Read their Ph.D. dissertations.
Excellencism, says Gaudreau, involves setting high standards but not beating yourself up when you don’t meet them. Like a participant’s medal in sports or diploma without having learned anything. Yippee.
“Excellencism takes the best parts of perfectionism and lets go of the toxic parts,” TDT adds. Like a bull$#*! meter?
When you’re perfect like I am, you never let things get toxic. “A man of genius makes no mistakes,” wrote James Joyce. “His errors are volitional and the portals to discovery.” Maybe he could write. But was he a Doctor?
The new Holy Grail — relax your standards or, better, get rid of them — is sure to win fans. I have two going now to clear the stench.
“What’s that smell?” my wife asked. “Burnt oatmeal?”
“Portal to discovery,” I answered. “Boosting particles’ — in this case oatmeal molecules — energy prompts reactions revealing mysteries of the universe. I liken my bowl to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most-powerful accelerator, just less expensive. Heard of the Big Bang Theory?”
She fired a shot at me. “Clean up this ‘universe’ you created,” she said. “Or else.”
“You want spotless?” I shot back. “You, Eve, the first human stained with sin? You’re inflicting low self-worth, stress, maybe even suicide.”
“I can hope,” she said.
“Fear not. I will come up with something excellent.”
“You call scooping up oatmeal parts that aren’t burnt and eating them excellent?”
“Perfect in my mind.”
“Yuk! Not even the dogs will touch it.”
“You mean the dogs who do all your cleanup?”
“They help with the cat boxes,” she conceded.
“Double yuk, but organic. Who let the dogs out?” In walked the Baha Men. “Double excellent,” I said. “Establish a rhythm, guys.”
“Who, who, who, who?” they sang as in flew an owl. “Yippie yi yo,” they all sang together.
“I thought owls were wise,” my wife said.
“Are they doctors?” I asked.
Python fell short in their Grail quest too, plus I still had a wife to appease, Bahamanian junkanoo band and owl singing together.
“A creative could solve this,” said Gaudreau. I’d been waiting for him since the first time I read Samuel Beckett.
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful,” I recited.
“That’s Godot, not Gaudreau,” he said.
“You’re trying to sell that as ‘excellencism’?” I asked.
“Wait,” he said. “You’ll see.”
In walked Monty Python. My wife shot their arms and legs off.
“Only a flesh wound,” Graham Chapman said. Together they sang “The Lumberjack Song.”
“Does it get any worse?” said.
“Depends on your standards,” said TDT.
“I have none.”
“That’s a start,” she said.