My Shortcuts column on Saturday, “Pursuing Self-Improvement, at the Risk of Self- Acceptance,” looked at the notion, embedded in American culture, that we should constantly strive to make ourselves better. I talked to several experts who noted that there are limits to self-improvement, including one who found that mothers who were constantly striving to be the best at everything were often unhappier than those who accepted being good enough.
The subject seems to have resonated with some readers. Here is a sampling of their comments:
Referring to my theoretical desire to have a nice vegetable garden — but my failure to actually plant one — Randi Cecchine of Manhattan wrote:
“Even better than having your own vegetable garden, that you don’t actually want to attend to, would be finding someone who really is desperate to garden but doesn’t have the space, who would take care of your garden in exchange for some produce, or in exchange for something that you do for him/her.
I think part of the striving that you mention in your great piece is the lack of community we feel — a feeling that we have to do everything ourselves. That’s what I think is most beautiful about Occupy Wall Street, is that it allows people to be in a space of sharing and giving. The more we stress about money — too much, or not enough — the less we seem to be able to really work and think together.”
Allan Paulvin didn’t like the tone of the whole piece: “My e-mail is not intended to insult your contributors, but what a bunch of hooey! Self Help/Improvement is not only accomplished through courses and seminars. It’s not always to make the self-helped feel superior or good enough. It is intended help an individual feel good about themselves, who they are and what they hope to become. Those of us who have participated in helping ourselves don’t need to feel superior, we need to feel a sense of self, a good feeling about what we can do something about! People want to feel that their time spent here on earth or any other planet is worthwhile.”
The article made the Rev. Trevor Nicholls, president of Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, reflect on what we really mean by self-improvement. He wrote in part:
“I read your article in last Saturday’s New York Times with considerable interest since it touches upon my own ministry as a priest and has, although you may not be aware of it, considerable theological and spiritual dimensions.
The question which your article doesn’t really address is what exactly we mean by ‘self-improvement.’ Watching less television, reading more books, cultivating a vegetable garden or taking up wood-carving will mean that we will (perhaps) make better use of time and acquire new skills but leave the fundamental question unanswered.
To begin to provide the answer, we need a true vision of reality — something which the vast majority of folk simply do not possess — and in particular, a true vision of ourselves, what is possible and what is not. Obviously, my own perspective is Catholic and I see human persons as being created in the image and likeness of God, i.e., with a mind and a will and, unlike every other creature on earth, able to transcend themselves, to become more than they are at any particular moment. We are not bound by our nature.
This ‘becoming more,’ however, is essentially moral; if it is not first and foremost that, then our self-improvement won’t take us very far, whatever skills and abilities we may acquire — though I do not denigrate such in themselves.
On a more mundane but no less important level, one key to any form of self-improvement is — and you hint at this — to be present to what one is doing at any particular time. Many people give the impression that whatever they’re presently doing, their minds are already onto the next thing. All of us, priests certainly included, would achieve much more if we could crack that one.”
Gene Cassidy of Framingham, Mass., commented on the idea in the column that sometimes good enough is better than never enough: “How timely amid the flood of encomiums to Steve Jobs that you would remind us that perfection is the enemy of the good. Your column was very funny. It was a few minutes’ reading with a big impact.”
Richard Plepler said the article “reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Robert Lewis Stevenson, ‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’”
And Fritz Ziegler of Covington, La., relayed the following conundrum when trying to avoid perfectionism: “As an inveterate self-helper teased by my wife, kids and others about my affectation, and as a perfectionist par excellence, I agree with most of what you’ve written, well all of it, but wished you had been able to get to this point you’ve probably already thought of: Acceptance includes accepting that sometimes we act in perfectionistic ways about self-improvement, i.e., accepting that we aren’t accepting enough. This can also be said as: Complaining about not being accepting enough is just another version of perfectionism. It’s all so recursive! I go round and round like this all the time, and I accept that about myself after all these years.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=962f4e0d61ffa6ab7df9de218ac52c61