The Gardenia: A Quest for Perfection
Looking back, I must’ve been particularly brave (or cocky) when I walked into my favourite plant store, Portland Market, looking for an addition to my home. I was also ready for a challenge. Irene, the shop owner - a wise woman with a bright heart - pointed out a new (and special) plant she had recently picked up–the Gardenia Jasminoides, or Cape Gardenia. “She smells so beautiful, you must put her beside your bed,” Irene said to me. Of course, living in a 375 square foot condo, anywhere in the room is “beside your bed.” So…check!
The promise of this naturally perfumed plant filling my small living quarters with her sweetly seductive scent was attractive. I imagined coming into my home, smelling her instantly, and being comforted by her greeting. I also imagined guests coming over (a rare occurrence) and being enveloped in her warm and sexy smell, forever associating it with me. “Your home is so perfect”, they would conclude. I liked the natural implication that flowed from that conclusion—that they associated perfection with me.
Seeing the excitement on my face, Irene mentioned that this wasn’t the easiest plant to take care of: “she needs lots of bright, indirect sun, consistent moist soil, and a well-drained pot.” My ego rolled its eyes, and I accepted the challenge.
I remember the walk home: I carried my new Cape Gardenia in my arms through the busy, cemented streets of downtown Toronto. I wondered if her smell trailed behind me, turning heads. I felt all eyes on her lush green leaves and plump open white flowers. I felt some eyes on me–probably because I looked like a fool in love, with a wide-smile on my face. Perhaps they are just impressed with how in-tune with the earth I am, I thought, foolishly. Mother Nature coming through! Look at me: a true born nurturer.
When I got home, I placed the new plant on the table in the centre of the room. I walked around her. She was perfect from every angle. I leaned in, closed my eyes, and smelled her. Gigi.
This is Gigi. She is high-maintenance, attention-grabbing, hard-not-to-look at, Gigi. Gigi’s flower petals were almost symmetrical, their velvety white hue was bright and pristine. She was perfect. I took her photo, posted it in my Instagram Stories, and went about my business.
I fell in love with Gigi not only because of her beauty, but the beauty she gifted my home and therefore reflected onto me. She presented to me a sort of elegance and grace that people anywhere in the world would find irresistible. If Gigi was human, she would be the prettiest girl in your high school. Each petal had a place around the bud, it was so soft and so pure. Each green leaf had a saturated green depth, making the plant look so healthy and alive. If Gigi was human, she definitely did pilates and was a strict vegan. I couldn’t help but smell her every time I passed by–which was often because, well, 375 square foot condo.
Gigi gave me a sense of accomplishment, and the feeling of having the perfect, adult home. I was a person, no adult, that could keep complex plants alive, no, thriving, with a home that smelled good at all times, and always had a cup of agave syrup to give to her neighbour.
I know you weren’t there, but you have to take my word for it when I say that I took care of her the way I was supposed to–but, I’m not sure how long after, and I believe it was that same week, I killed Gigi.
It was a very melodramatic death. One evening, I saw a yellow leaf. And another, and another. I had to sit down. When did this happen? Then, sitting down, I saw little tiny white clusters. Then when I got closer, I noticed the white clusters were moving. I began typing in abstract terms into Google, until I realized these little bugs were mealybugs. They are little pests that love moisture and can leave residue on the plant that messed up the photosynthesis process. I lifted the plant out of the pot to discover even more intruders crawling and infiltrating my perfect plant. Then I began to frantically click from webpage to webpage for solutions. My heart and head were racing in a panic; I was miserably failing Gigi. And myself. The internet suggested that I make a few potions out of materials I did not have…until I read that you can dip your scissors in part bleach and part water, dab the plant, and cut away any dead leaves and branches.
In my embarrassment and hot panic, I must’ve not been thinking clearly because instead of making a part water and part bleach solution–I just went straight for the bleach and dunked my scissors into it. I cut carefully, but I remember my hand shaking. I dabbed carefully, but definitely not sparingly. I discarded everything into a green bin and then I sat back down. I was sweating. This is where my luck ends, I thought. It’s because you got too confident. Then a little, kinder voice: but, look you acted fast and fixed the problem… perhaps.
I went to bed that night with a little pebble in my stomach. I imagined the plant not smelling as good and all of a sudden nobody wanted to come over to my house and avoided it like the plague. My mind raced and I envisioned a sign on my front door--“bad plant parent”; clear marking that I cannot take care of anything and to stay clear. Great. I’m already single as all hell and the last thing I need is a visual symbol that suggests I am not marriage material.
I want to tell you that it was rainbows and butterflies from there, but it wasn’t. I’m sorry. The next day, the soil began to turn white, the white flowers yellowed and fell off: I had bleached the life out of Gigi. A poisoning of sorts. I smelled the bleach. I had to get rid of the evidence.
My need for perfection killed Gigi. The fear of being imperfect and having an “ugly” plant showing my lack of skills, threw me into a frenzy that caused a mindless “curing”. And yet, had I slowed down - done more research or even slept on it - and let go of the need to be perfect, of having a perfect home, then perhaps I would’ve allowed for more space to consider another approach.
The apartment felt different without Gigi. More ordinary. And I felt like I had failed to orchestrate a perfect home. That word, “perfect”, appeared a lot not only in my interactions with Gigi but also in my life. Perfect, as I reflect now, ran my life. I can think of multiple times in elementary school where I wanted my notebooks to look perfect (and clean); where I struggled with my thin hair because it almost knotted and never looked like it was perfectly in place, like the other girls; where I always felt like a little bit of a mess if things just weren’t perfect.
“Nobody’s perfect”, we’ve all heard that–yet somehow, the celebrities that we grow up watching on screens are, quite, perfect.
The idea of “perfect” gives a false sense of control. The continuous strive for perfection is an exhausting and empty feat. Souls tire quickly when we push them to meet an illusionary state like perfection. So instead of “perfect”, what we often get are burn-outs, self-made insecurities, and missed life experiences (skipping parties because we don’t have the “perfect outfit” or worse, skipping trips to the beach because we don’t have the “perfect body”). We live in a society where plastic surgery is in our instagram feeds, photoshop is in our selfies, and “glass skin” is in. And simultaneously, the depression rate - especially among young people - is higher than ever before. This is no coincidence. Does anyone feel good enough to just be?
Now, I have to say that “perfect” is good sometimes—like when you’re performing a surgery or managing somebody’s bank account. But besides the guarantee of another chance at life or ensuring people don’t lose their livelihoods, I don’t see the world as helpful in our vocabularies and inner-dialogues.
The word “perfect” ran so deep in my daily vocabulary that I caught myself in Shawna Turner’s Yoga Teacher Training School dropping it every time the students would arrive in a pose–this is the exact opposite of what yoga is about. I began to consciously squeeze the word out of myself and replace it with, “what joy”, “how divine”, and “try today’s best”. In Yoga School, we also learned about the Chakra System--that is the energy that runs through the subtle body. It’s said that the first Chakra, the Root Chakra, is located at the base of your seat. It’s formed when you’re in the womb continuing on through early infancy, reflecting your relationship to family, safety, and security. If someone had a well evolved Root Chakra, they felt grounded and stable. If someone did not have stability in these pillars, the Root Chakra would be either under-developed or in over-drive; appearing as either hoarding behaviour or obsessively looking for a sense of control, like cleaning (just a few modern-day examples). Now, generally speaking I had a good childhood with many blissful memories.
My parents – although very young – did their very best. But that does not mean they were perfect. (There’s that damn word again). Although I have sympathy, empathy and gratitude for my parents, I often reflect back on not only my childhood, but their upbringing and circumstances in order to understand the trauma that destabilized our family. My father’s survival of horrific domestic violence without dealing with the trauma had definitely leaked out in ways that we weren’t quite aware of at that time. I would be 29 before I learned the full truth of the nightmare he had lived of his entire childhood and adolescence. When I think about it, my heart feels like it’s being squeezed. I often wish I could take my father as a child in my arms.
The thing about trauma, that I now know, is that it can come in forms that are big and obvious, and also in the utmost subtle, small events.
My mother obsessively cleaned and re-arranged our home for as long as I can remember—her father walked out when she was just one year old. When I find myself in a cleaning frenzy at 2a.m. I often remember me watching her as a child--not understanding why the floor needs to be shiny and why the entire living room is re-arranged. When this memory swims up in my mind, I try to go a little easier on myself and relinquish the need for a perfectly clean home. And I send her love too, that sweet woman who craved for us to have a nuclear family so that we would never know the disappointment that she had felt.
Now I realize that the strive for perfection is simply a mask for the fear of being yourself and showing your spirit to the world. If you are perfect then you do not have quirks - nothing for anybody to pick on. Perfect leaves no room for vulnerability. And vulnerability is important for human connection and self-acceptance. To be vulnerable means to consistently expose yourself to others–not a flawless facade, but all the cracks, dark corners, and messy piles.
I have distinct memories of being picked on at school – for having too many moles, or an accent, or wearing corduroy pants when you’re supposed to be sporting tear-aways – and making the conscious decision to pay more attention to how other girls dressed, looked, and spoke so that I could emulate it, and appear flawless so that nobody had anything to pick on anymore.
Perfectionism is the enemy of self-acceptance. And when we are in constant resistance to accept things as they are, we are in a state of constant disappointment–and that becomes our personal narrative. That’s a tough life to live. Believe me.
You deserve better, too. What you deserve - what we all deserve - is to accept yourself and all the little cracks and quirks. Because they make up the authentic, whole you. And that is beautiful. So maybe, we choose whole over perfect from now on.
And perhaps if I had just taken a breath, allowed Gigi to simply be an evolving creation of nature and not put so much pressure on us both to live perfectly, then, well, she’d still be alive. But without her, I wouldn’t have this lesson. So next time, I’ll grow slower, kinder, wiser.
Reflection Prompts
Below are a few questions for you to consider. Remember to be honest with yourself – even if it’s uncomfortable – because that’s the only way to truly get to know yourself. You can ponder these questions in your head or take out a piece of paper and make notes, write paragraphs, or call a friend. Whatever works for you.
What is your relationship to perfection? Be honest.
Can you recall a time - childhood, adolescence, or adulthood - when the pressure of perfection was put on you? Describe the situation.
Bring to mind a moment where you made a mistake and were hard on yourself. Write yourself a forgiveness note.
The best antidote to perfection is progress. Write down an area of your life where you are making progress—small steps count.
Words of Kindness
Pick whichever kindness phrase speaks to you, or all three, or use it to write your own. I like to put these on a sticky note and place it in my bathroom mirror (I live alone ha!). Repeat this mantra any time you catch yourself seeking validation in perfectionism.
I accept what is.
I am whole.
I am safe and secure.
I am enough.