Bye Bye Perfect-Bye Bye Paralysis

by Agakura Viñas Burihabwa
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From the moment we are born, being perfect is never part of the blueprint.

We learn to walk by standing up, wobbling, falling on our bums, and getting back up again.

Until one day, something shifts.

We get the message, quietly and persistently, that unless we already know how to walk, we’d be better off not standing up at all.
Especially not publicly.

Enter paralysis.

Not because we suddenly became incapable, but because an invisible hand began tapping our fingers, whispering:
“Not yet. You don’t know how to do this properly.”

And I often wonder… when, in the story of humankind, has anyone ever known what they were doing before they began?

Then comes the eternal question:

What exactly is perfect?

Perfect is a bit like Godot in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Something we wait for endlessly, yet no one has ever actually seen.
A stranger we somehow feel obligated to meet before we are allowed to begin.

What’s quietly ironic is this: perfect didn’t originally mean flawless at all.

Its Latin root, perfectus, meant completed, fulfilled, brought to an end.

Not untouched.
Not without defect.

But something that had been done, fully lived through.

Somewhere along the way, “finished” turned into “impossible,” and movement turned into hesitation.

Because perfection does exist.
It just doesn’t look the way we were taught.
Perfection lives in the moment we step forward anyway.

Walking an unknown path toward something that matters.
Willing to pause, adjust, and learn from every fall.

Perfection is not static.
It doesn’t hold its breath.
It breathes in and out, inviting us to do the same.

What feels perfect today may want refinement tomorrow.
That doesn’t make today a failure.
It makes it alive.

Working as a singer taught me this quickly.

If I waited until a recording felt “perfect,” I might never have sent it out.
And I had to make peace with the fact that a year, even a month later,
I would perform that same repertoire with more depth, nuance, and ease.
That didn’t mean the earlier version was wrong or unworthy of existing.

It was simply earlier.

Perfection, I’ve come to see, exists only in evolution.
In willingness.
In movement.

If this lands, you don’t need to push yourself into action.
You might simply notice where striving for perfection has been asking you to hold your breath.

Exhale first.
Movement can come later.