I’ve been thinking a lot about perfectionism. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last year learning and attempting to “do everything right” with the flowers—and failing. Or maybe it’s because of a conversation I had with one of our girls recently about how she doesn’t always have to be the best in her class. An A, a B? What does it truly matter as long as you’re trying?
In the whirlwind of Thanksgiving weekend, we put up our Christmas tree the afternoon before the above-mentioned daughter had to fly back to Indianapolis to finish her semester. It always feels so chaotic to me. Inevitably, someone shouts, “Hey Alexa, play Christmas music” and there’s a rush to pull the bins from the basement. Lights are tediously placed on the tree (by me), as everyone waits impatiently for the fun of putting on the ornaments. Then it seems like a mad dash get as much on the tree in as little amount of time as possible. Of course, the final decoration is the star on top. The girls take turns each year placing it. When they were little, John would lift them up. Now they’re aided by a kitchen stool.
This year, the star was precariously placed, wobbled a bit, and settled into a slight tilt. We all agreed it “was fine” (as was the spider residing in the star). A few days later, Evil Cat Poe puked into the tree. The tree was slid from the corner, thoroughly wiped down—well, as thoroughly as pine boughs can be cleaned of cat vomit—and pushed back into the corner. In all the back and forth, the star tilted a bit more. And so it sits…askew. And still does.
Every morning, when I sit drinking my coffee, I look at that star and think, “I need to fix that.” But do I?
I recently read a newsletter from Garbrielle Blair of Design Mom where she writes about a Twitter thread on doing a not-great job at things. This thread stated that doing things poorly was crucial to harm reduction and that striving for perfection can cause us to flame out. I’ve been thinking about that, too. How hard is it to live up to our own standards of perfection? I mean, no one is going to hand me an award for dusting every Monday or making sure my family has vegetables at dinner more often than not. Some days, it’s just not going to happen. Why do I beat myself up about these things?
I think social media plays into all of this, too. So many pages are curated in such a way that their lives seem…perfect. But in the last week, two different flower farmers I follow on Instagram shared some reality. One talked about trays and trays of plugs she killed simply by forgetting about them and the other admitted that her beautiful long hair isn’t really hers. I appreciate these moments where the curtain is pulled back to reveal that their lives aren’t perfect. Although it’s easy to be fooled when they only show you 20 seconds of their day. When will we remember that’s all we see?
But there is still trying, right? We try to do a good job. But maybe it’s okay if we don’t do a good job on all the things?
This has been particularly hard to teach while parenting three children…more to the point, three girls. When they were little, I learned about “wabi sabi”—it’s a Japanese philosophy about accepting imperfections or even finding beauty in the imperfection. That is my paraphrase. I know there’s more to it. But ask my girls. I’ve been injecting, “Wabi sabi, baby” into our conversations for years. I’m sure it drives them nuts. Has it stuck with them? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. The whole conversation about grades has me doubting my parenting skills, but I’m still learning to embrace the wabi sabi attitude, too.
All this to say, I guess, is there really such a thing as perfect? Can we just toss out that word altogether? I mean, how many people don’t even try something because they know they “won’t be perfect” at it? I know that was me at the start of this flower farming journey—hemming and hawing and finally taking my own advice…wabi sabi, baby.
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