Do you plan to listen to something and then put it off? I listen to podcasts in the studio, and I have meditation teacher Tara Brach on my list, and yet don’t get around to listening. But I couldn’t resist the title of this episode, Relating Wisely with Imperfection. She describes how we react to imperfection in ourselves with anxiety and aversion, and how this creates a trance of unworthiness. I am well acquainted with this trance, and how hard it is to break free of it.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. ~Danna Faulds
Tara Brach read this line of poetry and it resonated. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. I have many years of believing that perfection is the prerequisite for everything. The talk begins with a story from Ed Brown, Buddhist and baker, about his struggle to make perfect biscuits. He realized that he was attempting to recreate biscuits from a can or a mix, that if he actually tasted his own recipe, the biscuits were delicious. What should our lives be like? I believed I needed to have a book of poems published by the time I was 30. In my 30’s I believed I should have a “real career” rather than being a part time librarian. I believed that not having children meant I was outside the human story, even though I never felt called to have children. In making mosaics in my 40’s, I realized that this was my delicious life, and it was my own.
The chunks of glass in the photo are factory seconds of gold smalti. They are hard to come by since the factory strives to produce glass with the gold evenly applied, but these are my favorite because of the variations in texture. Beauty in imperfection.
