I am currently reading Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly; the title of this blog is a subtitle in her work. For those who are not online-research nerds and therefore would not know Brene Brown from her now-famous TED Talk on "Vulnerability," you might not have been introduced to the concepts in her work. Or maybe, you've just learned the concepts through living. Brene Brown is a MSW and Ph.D with a focus on researching human connection. Specifically, she has spent years researching both vulnerability and shame.
(Check the TED Talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html)
Her book Daring Greatly is about finding the willingness to be vulnerable. Appreciating the Beauty of Cracks is a section on perfectionism.
I have only secretly, in my own head, self-identified as a perfectionist. Funny enough, I chose not to announce my perfectionism out-loud so as to avoid criticism for the many lacks of perfection in my life. But, as Brene Brown writes about, perfectionism is a huge barrier to my happiness and connection. It often holds me back from trying especially, creatively, and leaves me beating myself up for my inability to perform on a certain level, at work or in sports.
I know I am not the only person plagued with perfectionistic standards. I imagine that everyone, in some venue or another, holds on to the idea of performing near-perfectly and either beat themselves up for under-achievement or never try because it won't be enough. I do not believe I am the only one who wants the world to see me at my best, all the time..... It can be scary, painful, frustrating, minimizing.. fill-in uncomfortable emotion here.. to not achieve perfection. It's funny, rarely are we doing perfect, more often we're doing a lot and people are accepting a product or performance that is good-enough, while we beat ourselves up about how it could be more.
Perfection, thus far, has stopped me from attempting to write the way I want to. I believe that writing is a way to reach out to others: to share ideas, create new systems/beliefs, and generally ease the pain of the human condition by ending the idea that we are isolated in our personal sufferings. I am an avid reader. But I could not put pen to paper or finger to keys because I want my writing to resonate like Andrea Gibson's or Jonathan Safran Foer's or to be as powerfully beautiful as Chris Cleave's or Annie Dillard's. But yesterday, after a discussion with the psych about perfectionism and anxiety and after reading Brene Brown's chapter, I got really excited and decided to give it a shot.
I've always had an attraction to cracks, ruins, peeling paint. One of my favorite get-to-know-you questions to ask people is "If you were a photographer and could only photograph one thing for the rest of your life what would it be?" My answer: Old barns. There's something beautiful about a structure being put to its full use then aging/falling apart. It is beauty that doesn't have to meet the standards of new-paint and shiny fixtures. Some of my favorite places, the hallways at my college and the rock-gyms and weight-gyms I go to, feel like someone's garage. Maybe the beauty of a ruin or something cracked is its existence no longer has to meet comparisons or standards; its brokenness is freeing.
My intention is to use this space as a place for my writing, whose standards I'll try not to judge over-critically, and as a space to find, collect, and publish stories, photos, and other media that appreciates/embraces the beauty of cracks.
