Trading in the struggle for perfection for the journey to humility

January 5, 2011

It is January, 2011. The time for reevaluation and looking forward. Now is the time when usually I make resolutions like the ones I'd like to make this year: put a major dent in my MA thesis reading list, blog regularly, call my family more, practice yoga three times and week and jog three times a week, eat whole and natural foods. But this year I am challenging myself further. To cease this never-ending struggle for perfection.

When I look at myself from an elevated removed sort of point of view I see a happy person who has been unusually blessed with a wonderful life full of good people, realized dreams, good health, and boundless opportunity. Isn't that the beauty of perspective? When I look closely at my emotional and mental state day to day I see a happy person embarrassingly easily stirred into discontented disappointment. Every day she battles this little monster of self hatred and more often than she would like to admit that little fucker wins: resulting in bad moods, and many many thrown away creative projects. She feels that she could always do things better and BE better. Well, I am recognizing this sentiment as a fruitless trap: "If I could only BE better I would FEEL good!"

Instead of focusing on ways to be better this year and ways to feel good. I am going to just try to BE GOOD. Be a good person: with humility and perspective. I am talking about putting an end to a cycle that has hindered me as an artist for years: expecting art that I create to be the best thing I've made yet, as perfect as it can be. More often than not when I make choreographies I throw them out when they are 3/4 of the way finished. One day I believe in it, I trust it, I like it and the next day when I come back to work on the dance all I can see are places where it needs to be better. It becomes catastrophic and overwhelming and I quit.

My only resolution this year is to allow myself to grow as a person and artist. I can't stay in this arrested state of teenage development much longer. How can I let perfection of my self be my primary concern in a world where there is art to be made, people to learn from, health to be taken advantage of and zooming further out: suffering people who have not been given the opportunity I have. Besides, who am I to think I could do something perfectly anyway? I mean can I have a little humility and just make and do things without thinking they might be better than anything else?

So I guess this is my declaration that I am giving myself license to put a lot of art and dances into the world, some if which will be bad! And from those failures I will grow so much more than just throwing away half done, imperfect project after project.

So just because I made it my resolution doesn't mean that it's easy. What actual things am I going to do to help me turn off that monster? Well the only things that are working for me now are trying to redirect my thoughts elsewhere, listening to good music, and the hardest yet: continuing to work on projects that I've lost faith in, just to see if the project or me is the one that is failing. This weekend I am sharing one of those projects. It scares me that I will show something that is less than what I am capable of but I feel humbled to be able to share it and I am taking a risk without presuming to be anything greater than I am at this moment. Humility and perspective

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