Perfection Is Not Your Friend
“...to require perfection is to invite paralysis.” - David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art By Fear
Once upon a time, I lived in the Black Forest of Germany with my husband and our four sons. For two out of the four and a half years that picturesque Deutschland was our home, my husband and I lived and worked as dorm parents for an international boarding school. We cared for 27 high school boys along with our own kiddos and oversaw a staff of four resident assistants.
As a dorm mom, I wanted to make Sonne (our facility was a former hotel named Sonnenhof) a real home for these boys who were away from the life they knew with their parents. Of course we fed and cared for each student in multiple ways, but I also wanted the space we shared to be homey and attractive.
A fellow dorm mom that became my friend (I’ll call her Betty) had a knack for making her dorm festive, inviting, and beautiful. I was in awe of how she could transform a room so quickly and easily. I did what I could, but I was paralyzed by wanting my decor choices to be perfect. I was in a season of struggle, caring too much about the opinions of others and being overly concerned with getting things just right. It kept me from doing all I desired in terms of decorating Sonne.
How did Betty do it?
She didn’t overthink her projects. She planned, purchased what was needed, solicited help, and got busy. In the end, her paint jobs weren’t perfect and her wallpaper seams didn’t always line up with precision, but her projects greatly improved the look and feel of her dorm! She worked hard but was lighthearted. She took pleasure in both the process and finished results.
In the course of several weeks, while Betty was busy painting, wallpapering, and decorating, I headed to my fourth store to try and find just the right wallpaper border (borders were a thing at the time). I felt I had to make the perfect choice and wanted staff, students, and parents to love my decision. Once I got out of my funk, I could see how silly it all was, but, at the time, I put ridiculous pressure on myself. Even after I finally purchased the border, it remained rolled up and unused until a resident assistant nudged me, and we partnered together to put the dang thing on the living room wall. (When my term was over, a new dorm mom moved in, removed my border, and promptly replaced it with a different one!) Sheesh.
Perfection is not our friend. And, it’s an illusion.
Of course, doing our best and bringing quality to our projects is good and right. But what I learned from observing Betty twenty-something years ago slowly seeped in, and I think about it still to this day.
Now, when creative paralysis threatens me, I’m more able to catch myself and absorb the truth: “What I create cannot be perfect; no one is perfect. My work will never please everyone, and everyone’s opinions do not have to affect me.”
As a writer, for example, dwelling on this truth helps me to move forward and toward what I feel called to create. I still struggle sometimes, but I want to create/write what is good, true, and beautiful (see Aug 20) and not get hung up on perfection which is unattainable and, in the art world, subjective.
Regarding perfection in art, Bayles and Orland go on to say:
“...You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do — away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes. Believing that artwork should be perfect, you gradually become convinced that you cannot make such work. (You are correct.) Sooner or later, since you cannot do what you are trying to do, you quit. And in one of those perverse little ironies of life, only the pattern itself achieves perfection — a perfect death spiral: you misdirect your work; you stall; you quit.”
If you find yourself in this state, I hope this post encourages you to move past it and forward in whatever art you are wanting to create at this time–on the computer, in the garden, on a canvas, in your kitchen…
We were made to create…imperfectly.
What do you want to create, friend? What’s holding you back?