Life is But a Dream
Key Insights
We want to be perfect in everything we do, but everyone makes mistakes
Reframing technique to make sense of “not being perfect”
Every November, I wonder why BC hasn’t mustered the balls to get rid of daylight saving time. They seem to be waiting for Washington to make the move. Daylight savings sucks. It sucks even more if you have little ones who don’t change their bedtime and wake-up time flexibly.
On Monday morning, after the time change, my daughter wakes up at 4:45 am. We play, then go outside in the dark for a walk. She crashes before breakfast because she hasn’t gotten enough sleep. The first tantrum is about wanting to wear rain boots inside. Sure, you wear your rain boots. The second tantrum (including proper lying on the floor and stomping feet) is about wanting to wear a second diaper over her clothes. Sure, you can be double diapered. And the third tantrum is about my husband not being willing to eat the wrap she just crumpled up in her hand. Time to go back to bed. She is not going to get through a full day at daycare on this energy level. After a faint 5-minute protest, she is out like a light at 7:50 am. I wake her up 45 minutes later so that she is in time to start a regular day at daycare. She is pumped and energetic.
I, on the other hand, am exhausted. I am late for the Zoom call with a job candidate because I didn’t see the new link that was emailed to me late on Friday night. I hate being late, and I find that unacceptable for a job interview, but well, that is how this day starts. A second mistake follows soon, when I send out an interim course evaluation to my students to check how satisfied they are with the courses they have taken so far. The program director phones me on my cell three minutes later. If I can please retract the email and close the poll, because evaluations before the end of the course violate agreements with the faculty union. I have never retracted an email before in my life. I have also never sent out an email that needed to be withdrawn. This workday is a mess, and it is not even 9:30 am yet.
I take a deep breath and reflect on these mistakes. I usually feel fairly competent in my job. It might take lots of rejection letters and revisions to get a manuscript published, but I usually end up publishing it somewhere. While my work may not always be good enough for top journals, it does not include major mistakes. I am trying hard to make sense of this situation and, finally, accept that I am only human. I am working with very little sleep, so it is understandable that I make mistakes. I might just have to accept that I am not perfect, especially since those errors are rare (for now). I am also reminding myself how patient I was with our 20-month-old. I kept my cool, guided her through her tantrums, and put her back to bed so she could have a normal day. At least my parenting skills didn’t totally suck.
I call this cognitive reframing of a situation. I remind myself frequently that both my work and family life are quite demanding. I want to be great in each role at all times, but there are times I am not great in both at the same time. Some days I am not the best parent, and on some days I am not the best teacher or researcher. On really bleak days, I fail at both. How can a person who wants to be good at everything be okay with this suboptimal situation?
We are taught from a very young age that life is perfect or should be perfect. Just this morning, I listened to the nursery song “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream.” Really? My 20-month-old is already being brainwashed with the idea that life is perfect, as perfect as what you dream it to be. When we’re a bit older, we watch TV shows and movies in which life is perfect, and people are perfect. We see perfect people on billboards and in social media all the time. No wonder that we find it hard to deal with imperfection. But imperfection is pretty standard in most people’s lives, so we’d better find a way to deal with it.
The mental reframing statements I tell myself are: “I sucked at work today, but I will be better tomorrow. I sucked at work today, but I was a good mom to my kid”. And most of all, I do not compare myself to my previous work-self before I had kids. That person had much more time for work, slept well every night, and did not have the mental coordination load of a household with 2.5 kids. No wonder that her productivity was at least 130% from what it is now.
I also do not compare myself to other moms or to my colleagues. There will always be better moms than me, and there will always be better teachers or researchers than me. But everyone’s situation is unique. I actively remind myself of my unique situation: one kid under two, a stepson with special needs, and a job that requires lots of effort and tenacity. I also actively remind myself that I wanted a career and a family, and that I want to be there for my kids. Overall, given the complexity of my family life and the challenges at work, I think I’m doing just fine.