We Can Be the Hero of Our Own Story
There is beauty in trying — in failing and trying again . . . and again
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Busyness is the simple answer. But it’s been more about focus, as we’ve been working to finish up some client projects while launching new ones, while also continuing with our ongoing homesteading work. If you caught our post about our shed build (How Building a Shed Stimulates Growth) the update is that we’re still working on it — presently on the final stages of the roof. Having never built a roof before I’m learning that there are many details all designed to keep water out and prevent wind from blowing it off.
I’m still making mistakes and being much more lighthearted about it, while I keep hearing from so many experienced builders about how everyone makes mistakes no matter how many years they’ve been doing it. Offering help to a neighbor who’s building a small cabin on his land I get to watch him make mistakes and laugh about it. I’ve shared with my neighbor about my self-identification as a “recovering perfectionist,” which led to an ongoing dialog about mistakes, fixes, and how far we want to go with our building techniques to make it near perfect or just good enough. The conversation has been gentle and without judgement.
It applies to everything really. To all aspects of our lives. Even relationships. Even our spiritual lives and creative pursuits.
We have a friend who is a potter. We mentioned to him that if he has any flawed pieces that we’d love to acquire them. Thus, he’s been gifting us with pieces he can’t sell. We love them. It’s true wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of beauty flowing from the juxtaposition of perfection and flaw.
I have a friend, who is more like a brother, that I’ve known since the second grade. As long as I’ve known him, he’s played the guitar. In fact, he taught me to play way back in the day. That works out to more than 50 years of a passion for the guitar. He can play it all, from flamenco to jazz, blues, classical, and his life-long passion for metal. He mentioned to me recently that he was learning Little Wing by Jimmie Hendrix, which arguably is among Hendrix’s best work. It’s an extremely complex song that few even highly accomplished players can master. So I asked him to send me a recording, which he did but not without apologies for mistakes and imperfections. His one-take recording was (to me) beautiful. If I could actually find a mistake in the recording it wouldn’t matter, because it was his expression and mastery that makes it so compelling.
How many times have we held ourselves back in life because we felt it wasn’t quite right? We didn’t hit the publish button. We didn’t ship our work. We didn’t take that first step to initiate a relationship. We didn’t speak up about a strong intuition we felt in our bones. We didn’t take a risk. We didn’t plunge into a new life direction. All because of fear of imperfection — that it’s not quite right or people will call out our mistakes.
And yet there is beauty in trying — in failing and trying again . . . and again. In fact, the stories, movies, and plays we find most compelling are the ones with a deeply flawed protagonist who keeps f-ing up over and over again. But then after so much failure and so much drama he/she finally gets it, finally changes, finally gets real and vulnerable and risks it all to save the day. We love these stories. They’re compelling and inspiring, as we live vicariously through the heroes of these stories.
But we can be the hero of our own story. We can change. We can risk. We can take the plunge into a new life direction. We can let go of belief systems that no longer serve us. We can heal from trauma. We can meditate for hours and hours and catch a glimpse of what our egos look like and begin to transcend it.
We can start a new business based on a deeper purpose than merely making money. We can admit our mistakes and make amends to those we’ve harmed. We can do things we’ve never done before knowing there is a good possibility that we’ll fail, or at least make some mistakes along the way. We can find the wabi-sabi in all things.
There is a passage by Joni Mitchell that’s been going around the Internet where she shares about the gift of monogamy. She wrote, “You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies.” Relationships are pure wabi-sabi, perfection and imperfection in motion, and the more we embrace it, the more we work through the mistakes and imperfections, the more beautiful the love.
As we embrace the imperfections in ourselves, we become more patient and forgiving of others, which is when things change on a fundamental level. Imagine how politics would change if we accepted the imperfections in our leaders. Instead of voting for those with the appearance of squeaky-clean lives, we vote for those who have overcome incredible challenges, who’ve made huge mistakes and made amends and changed. What if we elected a few ex-convicts, some college drops outs, some who’ve launched businesses that failed. And we shy away from those who present themselves as perfect and without flaw.
When I was first getting to know Maria and she shared her life story with me I thought, here’s a woman who’s done an incredible amount of growth, who has overcome extremely difficult things. Her story was so compelling to me. It drew me in. It made me want to know her even more deeply, to love her, and ultimately to share my life with her. And it’s led to such a richness and fullness of life.
And so here we are again, after a couple weeks hiatus from writing and publishing. Still busy, still fully engaged in life, while turning back to my not so small passion for creating with words — being the hero of my own story and hitting the publish button again.
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