growing up, i learned very early on that nothing short of perfection was good enough for my Mom. now, i loved my Mom and she taught me many things that are still part of the way i live my life today. but, looking back, i see that her push for perfection in my life (or what i perceived was a constant push), made me both a fearful and a driven person.
fearful because i wouldn't DO something unless i knew i could do it well. fearful because i hesitated or never asked questions for fear that i would be asking the wrong one or that i would be laughed at by my classmates/peers. of course, i know NOW that there is NO SUCH THING AS A WRONG QUESTION!! i just wish i'd known that when i was in elementary, high school and college...!
the other side of the coin -- and there is ALWAYS a second side -- was that it made me a driven person. if i have a project or an assignment, i will not stop -- not even to eat! -- until it's finished. and if the project isn't done to my liking, i will REDO everything until i get it perfectly right!!
thinking back on the years when my children were younger, i see that i never pushed them to perfection... probably because i didn't want them to "suffer" like i did. but, i wonder if i did them a disservice by not pushing them harder... however, as i've been able to observe them these past 2 years that we've been living with each of them (at different times since late 2012), as adults, they are all doing well in their personal lives (from what i can see anyway!!) and i can see that they have inherited (if that's the correct term) the intensity of my Mom to pursue excellence in their chosen field of work. it's nice to see that even if i didn't push them as hard as my mom pushed me, they still turned out to have excellent work ethic and a sense of pride in their personal and career achievements. so, i'm a happy mother...
now, i just pray that my grandkids will also "inherit" the same desire to excel... i think they will... i can already see that in josiah, keilah and jonah...
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