Good, Not Perfect
Green squiggles, a lopsided red square, and a honey-yellow ball in the sky with giant streaks emitting from its smiling face. “What’s this supposed to be?” my mother asked. How could she not tell? These colorful markings were clearly grass, a house, and the sun. My elementary artwork needed much interpretation, but to me it was incredibly clear. I knew exactly what I was drawing, but others needed some assistance.
I have always enjoyed art and music. In the fourth grade I took an elective art class. Once a week after school, along with other fourth graders from other schools, I would be dropped off to paint, sketch, and sculpt. I wanted so badly to create a masterpiece. But before we could paint, sketch, or sculpt, we had to learn a lot of theory and technique. I wanted to draw landscapes, but we started by shading a square box in pencil. Rather than molding clay into gorgeous pottery, we spent two entire class days on the different types of tools to use to sculpt. For ten weeks I sat frustrated in a tiny metal chair with a built-in desk, wishing my inner Rembrandt could be released.
A similar experience happened when I took piano lessons a year earlier. My childish passion wanted to play illustrious concertos, but instead I spent months learning finger placement and practicing scales. Finally, I got to practice an actual song. It was “Puff the Magic Dragon” and after I learned how to play it, I memorized the song. Then when my teacher would ask me to play for her, I would play the entire song looking only at my hands, not the music. She quickly learned that I wasn’t actually reading the sheet music. After many weeks of my tricks being foiled, piano lessons ended.
If you are not picking up on a pattern here, let me spell it out for you: I do not like to practice. Instead, my deepest desire is to be perfect right from the start. No theory, no technique, no exercise, just straight to Mozart. This is a very arrogant way to live. I’m no longer in elementary school, but this unflattering trait still takes hold at times. If I don’t think I can do something with excellence or perfection, I rarely attempt it. When working on something like art or music, or even a project at work, I am rarely satisfied because I keep trying to make it better — make it perfect. This also happens in my spiritual life.
I’m fairly candid that I struggle with “spiritual disciplines”. I use air-quotes because I don’t even like to use the word discipline. I prefer practice, but even that is strained because it requires ongoing, steady work. A maintenance of all the gears and mechanisms of my life that I would rather ignore. Journaling has been a frequent thorn in my side. I do not have a daily quiet time. Consistent practice frustrates me and usually makes me not want to do the thing at all.
What my thick skull can’t seem to comprehend is that mastery, perfection, excellence — these things rarely come without practice. Unless one is a prodigy, a savant from birth, most of us toil diligently to hone our craft. And yet in the honing, the crafting, the toiling, I think this is where our deepest passion and creativity emerge. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried painting something or writing a song on the piano, and just when I think I know what I’m doing, where I’m going with it, inspiration creeps in. A flash of something new. And the final result is usually far from what I had originally set out to create.
I recently listened to the audiobook of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Besides Gilbert’s impeccable wit in her writing, I found the heart of this work of hers incredibly captivating, that creativity is the soul’s response to working through fear. What I most appreciated about Big Magic was Gilbert’s conviction that even those who do not profess to be creative, have the capacity to create — and need to do so. But the lasting impact this book had on me was its critique against perfectionism.
I want to leave you with two quotations from Gilbert about the trouble with perfectionism.
I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it's just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, 'I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.
It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: ‘So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun... The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.’
I am daily working against the false virtue of perfectionism. Maybe you are too. What I hope you and I both can discover, what we can harness, is the practice of creativity. Of fun. Of doing something because it means absolutely nothing. And that can also make it mean everything. May your spiritual life grant you room for grace. Coloring outside the lines. Something that connects to your inner spark. In that grace, you are good enough because you are created by the One that calls creation good. May we live a life that reflects that truth. May we create and make messes and try again and do something new.
Maybe we will find something holy and good in not being perfect. Our very souls might depend on it.
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Good, Not Perfect
When God created the land, the stars, the sea, the animals, the plants, and people, God did not call it perfect.
God said, “And it was good.”
In our mess and in our hurt, when we are breaking and at our wit’s end, the Spirit is still breathing life into us, forming us into something new, and calling us good.
Today is a great time to practice letting go of perfection.
Start by releasing all expectations of what perfect even is.
Then, strive for goodness.
Be kind, patient, and loving.
Spread joy and make pace.
Live gently and humbly.
What blessing can you give your own created being?
Once you let go of perfect and start naming your life as good, you may begin to see so many other good-not-perfect things.
Name them.
Bless them.
Keep them.
Share them.
Create a life that is good, not perfect.
