Perfection comes of molds or off assembly lines…And the great irony is that we value things made by hand more than we do things that come from machines. Simon Sinek, author Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose.
I hate to make a mistake; I hate to have to use an eraser of any kind. But, I am grateful erasers of all ilk exist. It is good that we can correct many of our mistakes.
I try to complete each task set before me error free and on time. No matter how careful I am, inevitably, a glitch will slip in from time to time. I’ll spill coffee from an almost empty cup; the bedspread isn’t totally smooth; I keep putting off the ironing. Now with most of my chores around the house, it doesn’t really matter. I can mop up the spill, remake the bed, pull out the iron. In fact, much of my days are repetitive - make the bed, cook the meal, wash the dishes, wash the clothes - those obligations that must be repeated daily in every home.
Likewise, I want my time-saving machines to work as they are supposed to. Most of us have encountered a failure of a part at the most inopportune time like Thanksgiving Day before last when my oven wouldn’t heat to bake the turkey.
In my work, I try extra hard not to make a mistake. In my writing, a mistake not only reflects on me, but also on my subject. I’m not aiming for perfection; rather, I just want my information to be correct.
Computer autocorrect has truly become a bane for me. I read and reread and even after I think every word is correct, autocorrect sneaks in and changes a word. That supposedly time saver goes against the human grain and forces me to read and reread again.
At this point, I’m reminded of a Woody Allen quote that I used with my students as they undertook their own writing. He once said that after he attended the premier of his first movie, he never again went to any of his movies after they were released. “As opening credits rolled with the first one, I knew how I could have made it better.”
True, I wanted my students to write better with each assignment. With almost any endeavor we tackle, we, too, realize, after the fact, that we could have done it better. None of us will ever reach that level of perfection when we can’t seek ways to improve. Perhaps, it’s more important for us continually to try to improve the quality of our work rather than to bask in perfection.
Oriental cultures believe that no human is perfect; therefore, they pay tribute to the concept that “to err is human.” In Japan, “wabi sabi” honors the beauty of imperfection. According to legend, a tea master asked one of his disciples to prepare the garden for a tea ceremony. The young man trimmed the hedges, raked the gravel, picked the dried leaves from the stones, cleared the moss path of twigs. The garden looked immaculate; not a blade of grass out of place. The master inspected the garden, then he shook a branch of a maple tree - leaves fell haphazardly; the magic of imperfection, “wabi sabi.”
Weavers of handmade Persian rugs and carpets deliberately incorporate a minuscule mistake into the pattern of the tapestry. The mistake on purpose is not found in the dying nor in the quality of weaving. However with all handmade oriental rugs, mistakes creep in whether deliberate or not.
While we smile at the stories of deliberate errors, we Westerners are impatient for perfection. Amos Smith in Be Still and Listen, writes, “Most of us long for perfection. We hope against hope to discover perfect people. Our tendency to idealize one another and put another on unrealistic pedestals is common. We want to see perfection where it does not exist.”
We mustn’t give up. We mustn’t quit because perfection is beyond our reach. Our inability to be perfect or to find perfection in others is no excuse not to try to do our best.
In an interview about the movie, It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Joanne Rogers describes her husband, Fred (Mr. Rogers) as “imperfectly human.” Probably a description that fits many of us.
And so, as we move forward in this new year and try to keep our resolutions to do better, let us pick up an object dear to us - a handprint paperweight crafted by one of our children, a chipped sea shell from a walk on the beach, a handmade quilt handed down in the family - let us remember it’s not perfection we seek, but rather an appreciation for living life to its fullest.
2019