Letting Go of Perfection

Doing what we do for our own sake

Most days, thoughts about work have accompanied me as I transition from sleep into awareness. It seems to only add to my feelings of exhaustion and stress. So I’m returning to a useful ritual: sitting up in bed with my journal and the pen making those scratching sounds as it moves, ejecting the swirling mess of consciousness.

This is called Morning Pages from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and the idea is to simply put pen to paper and don’t stop for three pages. It’s a way to unclutter the mind and remove distracting and sometimes unhelpful thoughts. But I’m not really thinking too much about what I’m writing as I do it; it’s just whatever is lurking there in my groggy semi-awake state. Sometimes, I find myself stopping and drifting off into reverie about a show I watched the night before, about a conversation I had or need to have or about work. In Morning Pages (MPs), you can just pick up where you left off and write things like: I just drifted off into lala land. That was interesting. Where did I just go? I’m distracted by something that stuck in my mind last night or I just accidentally made a to-do list or a shopping list (very common!) 

In my fantasy, I’m sitting at my home desk or maybe it’s a comfy armchair with a cup of yummy tea that someone else prepared. But even though that’s usually not the case, I’m going to work not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Maybe that’s my mantra for today, and the aphorism is attributed to Voltaire. Even if my desk is a mess and my kids interrupt me before I’ve gotten out all three pages, I still succeeded at writing my MPs. The specter of perfection is not going to mess with all the good I’m doing.

Why did this feel important to me now? There are a few answers. I love rituals and routines and how they make me feel grounded. Maybe that’s not surprising given I’m a rabbi, and rituals are an important part of Jewish practice. Many people have a prayer, meditation or yoga practice that they do regularly, and it becomes part of the rhythm of life. 

Think about the things that we do always by rote; we can do them without our conscious mind taking much note. When I think about how to add something new into my life, I think about how to attach it to something I’m already doing. Like instead of waking up and laying in bed scrolling on my phone, I’m going to lay in bed and write. Or, I’m going to the kitchen to make my tea and instead of sitting there on my phone, I’m going to write instead. It’s how I’ve added healthy habits like flossing as well. It’s not easy to do and it’s taken a while for me to get back into doing it daily but I am already feeling so proud that I’m sharing it here. 

Another reason I started back up with MPs is because it’s a signal that I’m back into my creative self, and that makes me feel amazing. I have loved writing every week and publishing this newsletter, but once I allowed other things to interrupt my set writing time each week and stopped regularly spending the 20 minutes first thing, my creative pursuits took a back seat to all the busy-ness of life. I’m making the choice to bring it back. And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The Artist's Way program includes: daily MPs, a weekly artist date (time for yourself to fill your tank) and reading and exercises to go along with it. But know that trying to do it all at once will likely go well for a while until I am not able to sustain it and end up giving everything up because it’s too hard. I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just quit. So I’m taking a slow and steady approach which will also make me confident and proud.

Lastly, there is a direct line between writing this newsletter and starting the day with MPs. This newsletter has been a way for me to express myself personally and Jewishly; it has grounded me and opened up new ways of thinking for me and has connected me with others. It has especially connected me to my father in law Alan who writes a weekly Friday email to the family. We have come to love and appreciate this form of communication because it really is an email of what he’s thinking about that day about the world, about our family’s role in making it better and actual action steps that he has done that we can learn from.

Every time I send out a newsletter, he writes me back and tell me what he thought. He’s encouraged me to keep writing more than anyone and so doing this brings me closer to him. As it’s getting harder for him to write his emails, it feels even more necessary for me to keep going, no matter if it’s hard for me, if I’m too busy or if I don’t think that I’m saying anything wise to say. The important part is to keep trying and to keep writing and as I’ve mentioned already, not to worry about making each one perfect. Because the only way to work on my writing is simply to write; the same is true for my running and pretty much most things worth doing.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do your best and be ok with good enough. Otherwise, we hold ourselves back, tell ourselves we aren’t there yet. Not today, Frenemy within. Not today!

Judaism has so much to say about the quest for perfection and how we will never get there. Facing ourselves and the ways in which we have missed the mark is part of what this time leading up to the High Holy Days on the Jewish calendar is all about, so this seems all the more fitting. 

I’ve written before about brokenness, how the imperfections we all possess make us who we are and make us better. The broken first tablets that Moses brought down from Sinai but then smashed when he saw the people’s idolatry were kept alongside their replacement in the Tabernacle. The reminders of our failings seem to stay with us even as we work to overcome them. But as Leonard Cohen famously said: there is a crack in everything; that is how the light gets in. 

I bless us that we keep trying and striving toward making ourselves and the world better. But not by being perfect. Just by being ourselves.