Imperfection

I am a self proclaimed perfectionist. I color code things and I alphabetize things. Excel spreadsheets fill me with warm fuzzy happiness. I like things in order. I love tidy things in a row. When everything has a home and is in its home…WOAH. However I am an imperfect perfectionist.

There is a term in the Japanese culture called wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi roughly translates to finding beauty in imperfection. I have found that term and translation to be amazing to my life. It has allowed me to lift the burden of perfectionism off my shoulders.

Wabi-Sabi

The most wabi-sabi thing I can think of is nature. Nature is beautiful, it does what it wants, how it is meant to, under the conditions it’s given. A forest is no less beautiful because a tree was destroyed by bad weather. It is perfectly imperfect. The forest will move on and eventually the dead tree will see new life. It just needs to mulch down to prepare for what awaits. The forest is no less beautiful at any time because of the tree. The forest is.

It isn’t just nature. Even the simple task of shopping for glasses is wabi-sabi. Trying to find a beautiful pair to complement yourself while also restoring imperfect vision. As your vision continues to fail, you are presented with new opportunities for beautification. Embrace it.

Maybe I am just speaking from personal experience from my ever declining vision but it is something that I think of often. Not just because I am rocking my new and improved frames.

Try New Things!!

I know what you’re thinking… “so you’re not a perfectionist anymore?!”

Well, yes I am. But hear me out. There is nothing wrong with trying to do things perfectly as long as you understand that whatever the closest you can get to perfect is enough. To me, doing a perfect job means that it was done right and done well.

A fear of imperfection can isolate you. You don’t want to try new things because you don’t want to be bad at it or do it wrong. But you must! Failure breeds growth. Of all the things I have ever done, I always learn something to make another attempt even better.

I don’t always stick things out. Somethings just aren’t for me. But I like that I give it a good attempt before finally coming to terms with the task not being in my niche. For example knitting, I can crochet and I LOVE to crochet, but knitting fills me with rage. I have a hard time not dropping stitches and it drives me crazy. That being said, I know how to fix dropped stitches and I could whip up a scarf in a pinch but I don’t enjoy it.

Crochet on the other hand I love, making a new anything brings a smile to my face. Learning new patterns makes me to excited. I am just starting a baby blanket using the virus stitch and so far it’s turning out lovely. However I had tried a different new pattern before this one and did not like it at all so I took the whole thing apart to start over. That’s okay too.

What if you’re trying something REALLY new?

Maybe crochet isn’t the best example. I already knew how to hold the yarn and the hook and I already know the basic stitches. So what if you are learning something new with no baseline knowledge? Today is that day for me.

Today I will be canning for the first time with a recipe to follow in the next few days depending on if it is successful. But if it isn’t that is still okay because I will likely be able to figure out what to change to improve for the next attempt.

To be perfectly imperfect you need to be able to think on the fly, roll with the punches, not take things to personally while never losing sight of the goal. I remember as a kid in class seeing one of the motivational wall posters that said “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars” and that stuck with me. Even if you don’t reach your idea of perfect, whatever you did do IS AMAZING.

Learning the homesteading skill of canning is the next step for me to reach my life goal dream. With my hopes of a thriving garden this summer/fall I will need to be able to preserve our harvest. I lost a lot of good produce last year because I didn’t know how to preserve it and I just couldn’t eat it as fast as it was growing. So I have given myself the goal to learn how to can before I have a repeat of last year.

Albert Einstein said “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result”

Luckily for me Albert, I am imperfect not insane. Which is perfect.