- My daughter, Lori Anne Bourgeois, had an excellent article today on the way perfectionism can cause a person to lose their grip on a project. A project is our way to expand our life into more and more areas of growth. It must be completed, even if it is not absolutely perfect. Otherwise, there is no growth, only depletion and death.
This may sound melodramatic to you. After all, can a table, chair, bureau or any other piece of furniture really bring life or death? It can if we think about it as adding to or
detracting from our life.
What’s more this is behind much of what you hear when you enter into a group of craftspeople. They often will criticize other people’s work in an effort to make their own look better. This is sad because it misses the point of finding the place where truth and goodness meet in the work around us. It is certainly true that our work is not perfect, but it still has some goodness to it. Lifting this up gives the person who made it a boost (and possibly an opportunity to ask about the imperfections of his or her work) and helps you or me to be more aware of the whole work before us. In this way, life is enhanced.