A Rage For Perfection

McEnroe

John McEnroe
"Needed to lose head to play good"

named his autobiography "A Rage For Perfection." As Harsha Bhogle recently quipped in an informal talk here, perhaps he was the only player who needed to lose his head to play better. I'm on hunt for the book, if you find one, don't think twice before dispatching it to me :-)

Anyway, the title got me thinking. Quite recently I've realised something about myself - I don't have the "rage for perfection." This is not to say mediocrity doesn't bother me, but competition surely doesn't. I'm not someone motivated by the vision of the accolades reserved for the highest achiever. Even from the very start, in school, I was never pushed for the first place, by me or by my folks. I was among the toppers, but rarely "the" topper. During my preparation days for JEE, I didn't use to think in "top 10, top 50" terms. Till the results came out, I thought anything in top 500 would be cool. Then in IIT, I let it go loose. Even afterwards, in my job, I never aspired to be the best or whatever. I wasn't bad, mind you :-), just not the best!

Does that mean achievements don't matter to me? My proudest achievement in recent times has been my success (however miniscule) in photography. I started with absolutely no credentials and did reasonably well. Many, many people have looked at my flickr account and praised my work. Nothing makes me more proud! Same for my blog; I started as another anonymous blogger. Now after some 1.5 years, I've got more than 50,000 hits. No mean feat :-) And mostly I have written whatever fancied me. Not for the readers, just for me.

So the way I've explained it to myself is that may be competition doesn't push me, but once I set my eye on some job and if I really enjoy doing it, then I do it well. And so well that, often I would emerge decently placed in the competition!

Just wanted to tell someone.