Saturday, February 4, 2006
outlook on life
I participated in my friend and superb blogger DevraDoWrite's interesting discussion begun here and continued here. Now I want to elaborate a bit further. I have aimed for perfection in many areas of my work and, unwittingly, my life. Of course I failed, as seekers of perfection are bound to do, but I have concluded that the most important reason to try and not seek it is to be able to explore one's thoughts - and to express them - with greater freedom and joy. There is very little joy in perfectionism and our time on this earth is way too short to waste so much time worrying about absolutely perfect grammar or spelling or whether the fork is eleven and a quarter inches to the left of the knife. One of the blessings of blogs (an awkward word but I guess that would be something else to try not to care about) is that they are so utterly expressive and full-force, pedal to the floor. Most bloggers (or at least most that I read) are superb writers and really smart, and their output shows it, but I really think we should suspend some of our extreme criticism therefor (which is one of my favorite not-misspelled words). It misses the point, aside from wasting time. Should readers point out every misspelled or omitted word in every posts? I don't think so. We are all - sadly, regretably, lamentably and wonderfully, fascinatingly, gloriously - human. When someone shows me that perfectionists and those who impose perfectionism are more (or even as) caring and kind human beings than mistake-makers and those who let mistakes go, I will let myself act on noticing these things again.

Technorati tags: , ,

Labels: ,

Permalink | | posted by jau at 9:19 AM


1 more:
Blogger CGHill — at 7:54 PM, February 05, 2006:
I don't feel I've completed a post until I've omitted at least half a dozen words.

Or something like that. It's hard to tell these days.
 

< home >


Post a Comment

< home