The gentle art of getting it wrong

An extract from an article first published in Breathe magazine

When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right-hand corner, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.’

CARL ROGERS, HUMANIST THERAPIST AND FOUNDER OF PERSON-CENTRED THERAPY

Like sunsets, we’re becoming. It’s the process that makes us wonderful and perfect, even if in any given moment we need (or think we need) a bit of editing. Perhaps this is why our photos of sunsets are so often disappointing. Whereas the unfolding captures our heart, our photos are uncannily still. It might also be why we can agree it was ‘the perfect sunset’ but differ on the moment of perfection. Some of us feel most moved by the subtle promise of the sky’s early rosy tones, while others are dazzled by the impossible intensity of its near-neon peak.   

Present imperfect 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.’

LEONARD COHEN

Perfection is elusive. We know it and desire it but like a will-o’-the-wisp its light misleads and confounds us. Artists probably know this better than anyone. Katsushika Hokusai, best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa wrote, ‘From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things...yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account.’ Hokusai created around 30,000 sketches, paintings and prints in his life. On his deathbed, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘just another five more years, then I could become a real painter.’

If these two experiences teach us anything it is that one person’s perfection will almost certainly seem flawed to someone. The paradox of the imperfect perfect makes intuitive sense because we experience it in nature every day. As Alice Walker famously said, ‘In nature, nothing is perfect and everLything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.’ This applies just as well to people, who we love all the more for their scars and freckles, sorrows and terrible jokes. You’d think there would be a handy phrase to help us pass on this wisdom, but instead of ‘imperfect is perfect’ we have ‘practice makes perfect’.

The perfection myth

I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms. 

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI

Practice makes perfect is a story we’ve been telling one another for at least five hundred years, and according to a survey of childhood wisdom conducted by the NSPCC in 2014, in the UK it is the most influential saying passed from adults to children. Can you remember the first time you heard the phrase? Could you hazard a guess at how many times you’ve heard it in your life? Perhaps you say it too from time to time? 

Practice makes perfect is so neat and has such pleasing symmetry and alliterative flair that it slips under our truth radar unquestioned. But, like an Escher drawing, the story is impossible. No one could say Hokusai didn’t practise enough, but he never felt he or his work achieved perfection. What hope is there for the rest of us?

• •. •

The things we say over and over again have great power. Like a prayer or mantra, an oft-repeated phrase echoes inwards, shaping our belief system, and outwards, influencing others and the world we share. If we practise and we don’t achieve perfection in what we do, or worse, in who we are, we are likely to feel discouraged at best. Over a period of time, our small failures can snowball into self-doubt, anxiety, depression, shame, guilt and fear. 

The gentle art of getting it wrong means knowing our efforts will be imperfect and trying anyway. Somewhere in the effort, when we least expect it, we’ll experience something akin to perfection.

Read the full article in this month’s Breathe magazine.

Next week: Look out for our simple pneumonic to help you practise imperfection