The virtue of imperfection
October 27, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , trackback
Last week I went to a parent-teacher conference for my 6 year old. The teacher explained to me that, one of the challenges kids at this tender age faced was frustration with their own imperfection. The letters were not written uniformly, the spellings were not always correct and the math came out wrong sometimes.
“They get very frustrated with themselves sometimes,” Ms A told me the downside of trying to be perfect. Interesting, I thought. I did observe my 6-year old grunting and throwing herself on the floor because she could not make all her written words leveled.
I must have out grown that, whew! Lucky me, I was relieved. I tolerate 15% imperfections in many things I do. No wonder I love Oscar Wilde who so enjoyed lavishing on human imperfections.
Wait, but being content with imperfection has also separated me from Bill Gates (okay fine, among 1769 other things). Our house is perpetually only sort of clean, my meals are just edible, and I am mostly on time to any given event. It seems that the only area that I go beyond sorta-kinda-good-enough is my work.
How much should we tolerate imperfection? When does the tolerance become just an excuse for not trying hard. Is 85% is right cut off line for good enough? 95%?
I suspect everyone has her/his own threshold.
I started line dry our laundry a couple of months ago. But my family objects to the stiff and scratch towels. So we’ve reached a compromise – using the dryer for one load of laundry of which the fluffiness is demanded. Sometimes due to poor planning, I have to dry a load at night. Some weeks I do much better than other weeks. Collectively my laundry has been line dried 85% of the time.
For the most part, we get our food from our local farmers’ market, mostly organic. We still go out to eat at least every other week, sometimes once a week. A lot of the ingredients of restaurant food are neither local nor organic – no point of fooling myself. Not being an organic locavore all the time is okay. I’ve given myself the permission not to be a purist.
Most of the time I walk or bike to our local bakery to get coffee and a bagel. Some days I am in a hurry or am simply in an autopilot mode, I drive there. After chastising myself a bit, I usually don’t to feel guilty for long.
It seems that 85% is where my threshold hovers around. For now it works. Strangely not expecting perfection keeps me from giving up on my efforts.
Perhaps that is the reason that I have a hard time participating in challenges, which frequently require that additional 15% effort. It’d be too easy to beat myself up for not getting the perfect outcome.
If trying to get to 100% kicks the joy out of being green or renders 99% accomplishment a failure, is it worth it?
Mostly, this is just my weak justification for not trying harder. But also, don’t you feel better about yourself now? Don’t let the imperfection stop you from trying and trying some more.
Maybe some day I will drag myself to the 95% finish line. But for right now, I am hanging out in the good-enough zone.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
I think 85% is pretty good! I am with you. I go to the farmers’ market to buy my food, but yesterday could not resist the hot apple cider there, even though it meant a paper cup (for sizing purposes.)
I buy in bulk, but sometimes end up with a Subway sandwich for dinner.
I buy locally baked bread instead of making my own. And while I live in a tiny room, which uses almost no electricity, and walk to school every day, I do use the dryer once every two weeks. I know I need to get a dryer rack, but I haven’t found one used, and I am loathe to set foot in Ikea.
I think you’re doing great! We are a family of natural-born perfectionists (comes with the territory for professional musicians) and have learned to fight it, because perfectionism leads to performance anxiety. It took me a few years to be able to let go of mistakes and just move on. Now, my motto is “aim for excellence, not perfection”. I try to do my best, but, as my grandmother used to say, “the best you can do is the best you can do, and the best you can do is enough”.
By the way, I dry a load of socks and underwear each week and I do it at night, when electicity is cheaper. Who cares of that stuff sits in the dryer all night?
You are so right. It is just not going to happen that I am perfect every time. That I do the absolute green thing every time. Sometimes, life gets in the way. Thanks for the little reminder.
Thank you for this! Sometimes it’s hard to hang out w/people who are greener or read others’ blogs, but like you said, 85% is better than giving up! I love learning new things and being inspired by those same people…like you! What surprises me all the time is that I do enjoy these changes and what surprises me more is when my hubby says he does. I count that as 100% victory in bringing him over to the dark green side (picture me grinning and raising an eyebrow =)!)
arduous: you user a dryer? OMG!!! Kidding. You single-handily brought down the average consumption in LA. Now you are doing at London. I only wish I was that enlighten before 30
Joyce: you grandmother was a wise woman. I suppose as we get older and wiser, we are more accepting our own imperfections. If only the wisdom can be passed down to children.
GB: You too kick ass. You are my goal. Someday I will be like you.
DramaMama: Thanks for your comment! One time I heard my husband defending our effort to be green from my not-quite-understanding mother-in-law, I felt like a great success
We need all types - light greens to bring in the newbies and dark greens to set the standard. So we do need to set the standards high - the way you are doing - but I think that perfectionism can also become fear of failure (at least in myself), and so some people might never even try if they thought only 95% or 100% was good enough. Then we would miss out on all that good 80% greenness… as for myself, I just call myself “in progress”.