It is, I suppose, merely a sign of increasing age that I have become (a little :-)) less idealistic. A sometime-reader of this blog will remember the enthusiasm with which, twenty-five or so years ago, I told him of my plans to build "the world's best short-wave receiver." I have thought of my own tendency towards perfectionism - which has very often worked against any actual tendency in me toward perfection - as my inclination to building yet another "world's best receiver."
I'm not really cured of the disease of perfectionism. Every time I start something, I have to fight the tendency to be sidetracked into WBR syndrome. "If I am going to finish my Yapese dictionary, I really need to get all the words in the Yapese Bible in. Oh, but then I'll have index them to the context they are a part of. But in that case..." I must keep in mind Chesterton's (What's Wrong With the World): "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
We must work. We must do what we can. Yet all our efforts are imperfect - and at the end, all that we do will fade - like the grass of the field that withers. All is vanity.
And yet ... it is not so. The same Bible tells us (I Cor 15:58) "...your labour is not in vain in the Lord."
It is a mystery to me what "new heavens and new earth" can be - yet somehow I think that what we do - especially what we do with love here in the old earth under the old heavens - may be re-presented to us one day, perfected and shown in real beauty. Will it be rather like being a pupil of a great master artist? We will listen to him, make our attempts at drawing something beautiful - our frustration always there are our inability to do perfectly what we want, yet knowing that we are trying - and then - perhaps? - he will take it, change a line here, a colour there - and let us see what we were aiming at all along?
Today at Mass - the Fourth Sunday in Advent - I felt, somehow, that the Lord was with me - that even now, in the old earth and under the old heavens, He is encouraging me to try, to do my best, knowing that it can never be good enough - but knowing that the end of all my starts and uncertain attempts will be to be renewed - to be made, after all, what I had always wanted them to be.
May it be so.
Some thoughts on the same topic.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the quality of our work, even our best work, often looks to the Lord as the work (even the best work) of a child of 5 looks to his parents. If so, perfectionism is an illusion: a child of 5 no more could paint the Mona Lisa than we could do something truly perfect. If that's right, then perfectionism can be a very bad thing. The better becomes the enemy of the good: we pass up the opportunity for good in the vain hopes of better, and in the end, do nothing.
One way around this might be to recognize that a quick job now can often be redone later, better. So a Yapese dictionary can go ahead even if there are words in the Yapese bible not yet in it: a partial dictionary is better than none, and it is as easy or easier to complete a partial dictionary as it is to start from scratch.
@John from Canada:
ReplyDeletea quick job now can often be redone later.
So ... ""If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
:-)
jj