perfect is the enemy of good

i read an article not that long ago about how a lot of people don't like being alone with their thoughts:

A research team led by University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson reports that, in a series of studies, “participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think.” 

What’s more, in the researchers’ most remarkable result, “many preferred to administer electronic shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.”

this is a phenomenon that i have a really hard time understanding. i generally feel like i don't have nearly enough time to be alone with my thoughts. (although, to be fair, if i spent as much time in my head as i *want* to, i might as well be a hermit, so it's probably just as well).

one of the things i've been kicking around in my head recently is the aphorism "perfection is the enemy of the good." i have ... a lot of perfectionist tendencies, to put it mildly. when something matters to me, i want it to be done well, or not at all. there are certain benefits that come from having a personality like this, for sure, and i'm not planning on actively trying to change that part of myself any time soon.

but of course it isn't all good. some of the issues that come from perfectionist tendencies include:

• fear of failure
• avoidance of new experiences
• general frustration with oneself
• difficulty understanding and accepting grace
• not being satisfied with things that are good (because they aren't perfect)

my experience of learning to play guitar is like a microcosm of my perfectionist life, in a way. i want to be good, and when i'm not as good as i want to be, i don't want to play at all. it's a stupid and self-defeating attitude, which i am aware of (and which ends up making me more frustrated with myself).

playing chords + strumming with a steady rhythm + singing is SO HARD for me, which makes me feel dumb because i've taught myself to read tabs and how to play some semi-complicated fingerpicking songs and i took like 14 years of piano lessons, i know how to multi-task, okay??? nevertheless, it is difficult, and it makes me frustrated and irritated and self-conscious.

so i've been thinking about that aphorism. "Don't let perfect be an enemy of the good." don't let the pursuit of some idealized perfect performance detract from the joy of what you can do right now. i'm not perfect, not even close, but -- i can play, at least a little, right now.

which is, like i said, a portrait of my life in miniature.


these are three clips of me practicing the Vance Joy song "From Afar," the first two times with the song playing in the background as a reference/guide for me, and the last time me by myself.

it's strange and slightly terrifying to put a recording of myself singing out on the internet, but hey. i don't want to be afraid of failure, or new experiences. these aren't great recordings, but ... they're good enough.

which is how i want to approach living my life, despite my perfectionistic tendencies. just jumping in, because my best effort will have to be good enough.

a break from our regularly scheduled programming

I have had a whirlwind last three days: Saturday in Harrisonburg, Sunday in DC, dinner last night with visiting family members. 

I didn't decide to head South until Thursday evening, when I realized that my parents were definitely going down to help my brother with some car issues and also watch him play in the alumni-student soccer match. I stayed at my aunt's place in Massanutten, which is where this daffodil picture is from:

A brief stop on discipleship hill to visit my writing-tree...

Then back to DC to meet up with Thia's family, who were visiting from Colorado. We went to the fish market near the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers...

Rode the metro (all 9 of us...what an adventure)...

Walked by the White House, where I just happened to run into my great-aunt and -uncle, who are visiting the area from Iowa. They knew Thia's grandfather - file this one under #MennoniteGame...

And finished the day out by retreating to Thia's uncle's apartment in downtown DC, where we cooked up the fish we bought at the market.

Then, yesterday night, I had dinner with my great-aunt and -uncle, which was lovely. We talked for a long time about family, work, food, all sorts of Mennonite news...I was so happy to have family around. It's funny how being around family, even if they are people you haven't seen for a while, somehow makes a place feel more like home.

you couldn't pay me to do it

at 5 pm on Friday I found myself calling the pastor of my church in Harrisonburg, volunteering myself to drive a stranded member of Early Church back home from DC.

in the rain.
in the dark.
late at night.

file this one under crazy, impulsive, irrational. 



"if you're sure, that would be a blessing to me, emily," he said, the static of a bad connection hissing in my ear.

i crouched in the hallway, scribbled a phone number down on a bit of graph paper. i'm crazy. "i'm sure."



i remember my dad telling me about working for habitat for humanity, one time; how he said "there are some things you couldn't pay me to do, but i'd do them for free."



what is it that takes hold of people and shakes them into this crazy, impulsive, irrational behavior?



...file this one under love.

It was definitely one of those "ask and you shall receive" moments.

I mean, except for the way that I didn't ask, exactly.

* * *

A few weeks after starting my job, a got a postcard from a friend. He said, "I hope you are feeling like your adult, real world life is fulfilling and challenging..."

I just so happened to receive that letter on a day when I felt those things, but I answered him something like this: "Last week I was afraid I was wasting the only life I have, but today is better. I think all my angst was a result of a headache and too-little sleep."

Funny how that matters, I told my friend. It makes me think of something C.S. Lewis wrote, that how good we are is more dependent on what we ate for breakfast than we like to imagine.

* * *

There was this book I read when I was a kid, a funny sci-fi story where a girl gets trapped in a virtual reality game and can't get out. The whole story is about her efforts to escape. Near the end she starts crying, and that's when the game lets her leave.

Because it was designed to be hard, but not that hard.

* * *

The past few weeks have felt so, so difficult. The work that The Housemate and I are doing isn't hard, exactly, but it's technically quite challenging, and requires hours and hours of highly focused concentration. My project has had a lot of road bumps. There's been a lot of - hm, how to say it. A lot of not inconsequential issues for me to learn about and deal with; the anti-vibration table being mis-aligned and causing mechanical stress on my cells, air bubbles in the solution exchange system, cells sticking to the coverslips, the cell-culture room overheating. Etc.

And my personality is such that I am nearly always much more likely to try to sit and reason/work my way out of a hardship than ask.

* * *

One of my lab mentors got back from a work trip last week and came in yesterday to help try and solve some of my technical issues. A few minutes in and he said, "Well, this is obviously not working right," thumping on the anti-vibration table. He shook the Farraday cage and tugged on some cables, and a few moments later said, "Alright. I think I fixed all your problems."

And he was right.

Today the woman who is overseeing my project stopped by my little cave. "I heard S___ solved the problem, hm?" she asked. "The table, right?"

I nodded.

"I never would have thought of that," she said. "Huh."

* * *

Okay, so what am I even trying to say, all these scattered shards...

The past few weeks the Big Boss has been telling me, "Emily, you have to ask questions." And I would get so frustrated, because I felt like I was. I would ask, and I would try to apply what I learned, and nothing was working.

But I think I wasn't asking the right questions. I wasn't asking the right people. I wasn't chasing down the question, knocking on every door I could.

* * *

On Monday morning I woke up with a stiff neck. I must have slept in a funny position or something. So Monday and Tuesday I was in pain. Tuesday evening when I was biking home from the NIH campus, I was thinking about how it was probably actually dangerous to be biking, because I couldn't turn my neck.

I was frustrated with work. Stymied, confused. I was in pain. I was tired. My life felt very hard.

I find it is less easy to be optimistic and joyful when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. Less easy to find fulfillment, meaning.

* * *

This morning, during lab meeting, I just got this lovely sense that it isn't supposed to be this hard. 

You know, I didn't actually end up asking the right question, ever, but the problems got resolved anyway. I told the Boss tonight that today was the best day I've had yet.

* * *

Maybe what I'm trying to say is this -

this whole week I've been thinking about that phrase ask and you shall receive. 

At work, that means - well, it means work, yeah? (Usually, at least), it means chasing people down, asking variants of the same question over and over again, it means reading scientific papers and trawling through the vast recesses of the internet.

This morning, though, the bone-deep sense I got that things aren't supposed to be this hard... it was like a lesson in grace. Imagine if God was waiting around for us all to have the right question. I, for one, would never get anywhere.

No, instead it feels like sometimes God is just ready to open the door to abundant life even if we barely have the energy to crawl up on the porch. 

ready for spring

I'm tired of it being so cold all the time; this morning when I was biking to church the air felt like spring. It was still cold but it smelled damp, like growing things.

Everything starts to feel so much more alive when green things are growing. I'm looking forward to coming out of my emotional hibernation.

good things

many good things so far this semester;

two of the best today. one, going to a friend's house to watch the Blue Like Jazz movie. two, the first hymn sing of the year - and the first hymn sing with my brother. :)

'the really important kind of freedom'

...it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. -G.K. Chesterton


I read this recently and it reminded me of the people who live at the house I work at and my last entry on this blog, the one about the life of a perpetual child.


I can't really imagine being able to exult in monotony. To never grow tired of the banal, the trite, the routine, the infinite small moments that make up a life. But I keep coming back to this thought - what other way would I want to live? A lot of life is banal, trite, routine, and small. If I can't rejoice in these things, than there is a lot of life that I am squandering.


And THIS makes me think of (who else) David Foster Wallace & his beautiful and terrifying commencement speech [Kenyon College, 2005]. In this speech, given to graduating college students (which I will be so, so soon!), DFW reminds us that how we see our lives is a choice. He reminds me every time I reread this that it is hard to stay aware and awake and alive, but it is always a choice. (I lifted quotes from this lovely website):



There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?" ...if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

...And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration.

...But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

...the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

...the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

Living Deep Awake

I don't know where this saying comes from - I first heard it from a friend of mine at EMU. I think of it as my antidote to a society that thrives on antidepressants and corporate cubicle farms. It is possible to sleepwalk through life because of business or boredom or laziness or exhaustion. It's possible to just not. pay. attention.

I don't want that.

Living deep awake - it's the opposite of sleepwalking through life. Being aware of the life that is thriving around you. Alert to it, to the beauty; all this beauty, all around us, all the time.


Here is how I've been living deep awake this summer:

treating hanging up laundry like an art form
noticing the bugs outside, and smiling at them
listening to bon iver - putting holocene on repeat
writing poetry
reading poetry
shelling peas
riding bike with my dad and noticing shadows
sleeping enough (it's important. it helps me see things better. it helps me love the world)
listening to my thoughts
kayaking
shopping at the vietnamese grocery in lancaster city
taking risks
sending letters
loving life
loving God
loving the world


Mary Oliver writes: I don't know what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to be idle and blessed, which is what I have been doing all day.

I like that thought very much. I do know how to pay attention to the created world. I do know, little by little, a little more each day, the character of the Creator. I want to do this more and more. I want to see better. I want to be Awake.

blessings

there are lots of ways to remind yourself to be grateful; make lists of things that you are thankful for, pray (continually, give thanks in all circumstances...), surround yourself with people who are looking at those things in life that are lovely.

i am generally a grateful person, i think. on most days, i am the idealist, the optimist, the poet marveling at creation. but it is rare for me to be grateful about things that i don't like.

i don't like folding laundry. (matching socks = pet peeve of mine) today, though...today as i dumped my clothes on thia's bed and started sorting through the warm t-shirts and jeans and socks and sweatshirt and towel and sheets and pajama pants i thought i am so blessed.

i am grateful that i have so many clothes that it takes me a while to fold them. i'm grateful for the work of folding them. i'm even grateful for needing to match my socks.

so tell me - what 'annoying' thing are you grateful for?

Thoughts on Advent; Life is Vast & Wonderful; Thia is home

This past week has been overwhelming: anatomy lab exam (cumulative), biochem presentation prep; finishing ceramics things; Christmas parties, etc., etc.

And on Saturday Thia came back from South Africa. So many stories shared already, so much left to hear.

Today at church we were focused, of course, on advent. On waiting; on what we are waiting for. It was a good morning, and what made it even better was that after the service was over my home group presented me with a basket of food - cookies and an orange and coffee and tea and pretzels - a Christmas present and finals care-package all in one.

I know lots of people who are critical of church & have been hurt by churches; I am sometimes one of these people. But I am beginning to see (and to know deep in my bones) the ways in which it is possible to become part of a family (even when your family is far away) through a community of faith. I love Early Church. I feel loved there. My Advent prayer for this afternoon is that as we wait in expectation for a future redemption we do not settle for anything less than striving to live into the Kingdom of God now.

reminder of life

Today in chapel Linford was the speaker, and he was talking about things that reminded me of my cross-cultural. I've attached the podcast of his message below:

http://emu.edu/now/podcast/2011/09/28/do-not-get-into-a-boat-with-jesus-if-you-want-to-stay-dry-linford-stutzman/

I highly recommend listening to it - it is only about 20 minutes and he has great things to say.



This week EMU is focused on missions, and today in chapel there were people from different missions groups visiting campus. After chapel they were set up in the Campus Center and then representatives also ate lunch in the cafeteria, holding conversations with students. I was lucky enough to eat lunch with some students from my cross-cultural, Linford, Janet, and a man from Our Community Place, which is the community center that meets in the building of the church I attend. We had a conversation that lasted about an hour and a half about lots of things, including whether or not international missions is a good thing, the difference between evangelism and development work, questioning whether programs and money impede or help spread the gospel, what that word "gospel" means, how to read the Bible, symbology on EMU's campus (we have, for example, a statue of Jesus washing Peter's feet, but not a cross), the way scripture felt different to me in Israel than it does in America, how to remove the threat of violence from the concept of conversion (and whether this is possible), the idea that Jesus should always make us feel uncomfortable - my friend Tim asked, "have we become too comfortable with the idea of a peaceful Jesus?", the pervasiveness of the false dichotomy of dualism- the separation of mind and body... my list could go on and on. It was so wonderful to be among other people who are asking some similar questions but also have some answers, or at the very least some faint stirrings in their spirit pointing them in certain directions. It is good to be in community, to join with Jesus and people, to practice listening, to learn.