Who am I? (2024)

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” ~ Carl Sagan

When I first read this quote and the underlying meaning behind it I was fascinated. The quote is basically about the complexity of the universe that we often forget about. I believe the literal meaning behind it is that the ingredients that make up an Apple pie are a product of billions of years of evolution. I found it to be very profound and true but what I neglected the most was my love for this quote and what it tells me about myself.

People around me have often called me a perfectionist but it wasn’t a good productive type of perfectionism. It was the paralyzing type of perfectionism that renders you completely stuck in the thinking process and rarely doing anything; be it a musical piece I’m composing or a novel idea I’m writing or a movie script …etc. I always get stuck in the thought of “How can this be perfect?”. I remember coming across this article that said “Sometimes when you ask yourself the question is it good? you’re actually asking yourself, is it perfect? guess what? it will never be perfect but that doesn’t mean it’s not good”, I remember reading this and thinking “Holy sh*t.”. I always do this to myself, thinking that whatever I’m producing isn’t good because it isn’t perfect but then again how can someone become better at something without constantly working on it and how can you improve something that you didn’t produce and test in the first place?. It’s like I wanted everything I produced (for the first time) to be perfect and this is complete insanity! I wanted to leap across the staircase to the next floor without taking it a step by step, setting the bar for myself too high it’s almost impossible. This is where the quote fits. This is where the quote resonated with me without me noticing what it tells me about myself. That every time I try to make an apple pie, I get stuck in the complexity of what would make it the most perfect Apple pie I end up not making the pie at all.