What does it cost to be perfect? How about to be great? What about the cost for preserving someone else’s dignity? Do you have a solid definition for dignity? Is it as simple as making sure nobody is walking around in public without clothes? For this week’s protagonist, Mr. Stevens, he is grappling with these same questions– remaining blind to any part of his narrative that does not foster greatness or dignity.

This week, we’re reflecting on my first read of 2026 (read back in January): The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The novel follows Stevens, a renowned butler who, for the first time ever in his professional career, is forced to take a holiday. We follow the mundane journey of Stevens reflecting on his great work as a butler while he drives to the countryside to reconnect with a coworker from days past.

There’s not much more to add to this story without spoiling major plot points. The book is a short 250-page story with only a couple of major flashbacks, and fewer check-ins on the present day– Steven’s 4 day trip. But without spoilers, I truly enjoyed reading this book, and am grateful to have started the year with such a strong character-study. Stevens might very well be my favorite execution on an unreliable narrator that I have read, ever. His biased narrative is one that can be so true for countless people, and since it ties directly to his perception of self, he keeps the facade up through the very last sentence.

As a therapist, part of my job is to help clients untangle their stories enough to escape the tunnel-vision of narrative biases and help them understand new perspectives to their presenting concerns. However, it would be counterintuitive for therapists to assume the nudge that brought someone to therapy is the only reason they have sought treatment. Typically, the thing people seek treatment for is the catalyst, not the true problem.

In Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (2019), Lori Gottlieb shares about her own journey to starting therapy. She says she needed help to process an unexpected breakup from her fiance. Then, after her first appointment, her therapist said he did not believe it was truly about the breakup. After months of therapy and insisting her treatment was about her ex, Gottlieb felt vulnerable enough to share about her anxiety around aging and life choices. She admits that she was seriously ruminating on her own mortality.

Far more than a breakup.

Returning to Stevens, who seems to insist his own rumination is on, “what is dignity,” and, “what makes a great butler?” We start to notice throughout his journey that maybe these aren’t truly what he wants to ask. But we are along for Stevens’s ride, not our own. And an outside perspective can always see between lines, the clarity just fluctuates. 

For example, throughout the story, when Stevens is reflecting on particularly difficult memories, he boasts to the reader about his ability to remain calm, stoic, and dignified. However, when he recalls what the people around him say, we get many lines like, “are you okay,” “is something the matter,” or, “have you been crying?” If it weren’t for the dialogues of other characters, we are expected to assume Stevens successfully stifled all emotional reactions and remained nothing more than a great butler. But both the reader and the characters witnessing Stevens consistently recognize there is something awry. Nobody can truly know what exactly is wrong, since Stevens will not talk about the issues, but the outside perspectives nonetheless know there is something wrong.

But there is a cognitive dissonance that comes with assuming we must be perfect at what we do at all times. Brené Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) that we often confuse worthiness with achievement. We believe we must be perfect enough, productive enough, useful enough. Only then we’ll finally be worthy of love and belonging. Stevens embodies this completely. His worth is entirely tied to being a flawless butler. Any diversion– any opportunity to show another side to his identity– even something as minor as enjoying romantic novels—he shuts it down immediately.

However, Brown’s research shows this is backwards. Worthiness doesn’t have prerequisites. We don’t earn our humanity by being perfect. Stevens spent his life believing that if he served with absolute dignity, never faltering, never feeling, he would achieve greatness. What he actually achieved was a life where he couldn’t recognize love when it was offered, couldn’t grieve, and couldn’t admit his own complicity in times of moral corruption from his employer. He traded his humanity for the illusion of greatness—and discovered too late what greatness can cost.

I have worked with many clients who are seeking treatment due to work-related stress– fearing that if they do not perform well, they will be let go. This is honestly a major product of a capitalistic ideal and constant pursuit of “The American Dream,” but today is not the day for that soap-box. However, it goes to show that there are countless Stevenses out there, placing their worth in their efforts at work. However, I have come to realize that more often than not, this is simply the catalyst that brought clients to therapy. That there is something bigger pulling at their hearts which the cognitive dissonance is preventing them from fully seeing.

In these cases, the therapeutic work isn’t teaching them to be stronger, to try harder, or give them tips for sentient-robot-level-skills. It is teaching them that it is safer to be softer. It is giving them permission to name what they feel, and to grieve what they’ve lost. It is acknowledging that what they’ve built is impressive, but it does not have to be what they want– and giving them permission to prioritize what they truly want, no matter how silly they feel in naming those dreams. If it’s to open a laundromat, shoot for those stars. If it’s to be a stay-at-home parent, that’s fantastic. If it’s to make enough money to have a studio apartment where you foster cats, you don’t need to be a CEO to make that happen. You can stop climbing that impossible ladder.

In the final pages of the book, Stevens meets a man who says that the evening is everyone’s favorite time of day, because that is when we get to truly be ourselves, and nobody demands anything else from us. Stevens starts to worry that he has made the wrong choices in his life, and the man tells him to not focus too much on the past or else we might get lost looking back. I find these two comments to go hand-in-hand. Are we giving ourselves permission to be present when the only expectation is what we make for ourselves, or are we busy spending that precious and limited time thinking back on all the things we could have done differently? 

Because the honest truth is that when we start taking control of our story, when we start making adjustments from our presumed joys to our authentic joys, it can feel undignified. It can lead to memories of regrets. But the consequences to that past version of you have already passed. If you lost your love for a time, that is consequence enough. You can learn from that to say, “I want to spend the rest of my evenings being open to any and all love.” We don’t get the time we lost back, but when we focus on our humanity, the time we have can feel infinite in the moment.

So I wrap up by asking again: to you, what does it cost to be perfect? How about to be great? Are you wanting to prioritize chasing those definitions, or is it time to start looking at who decided to make that your priority? It is never too late to stop playing someone else’s game and pursue your own rules.

References

Brown, B. (2010).The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden Publishing.
Gottlieb, L. (2019).Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.