In Praise of Imperfection
by Katherine B. Arthaud

The other day, I can’t remember why, but I was thinking about mistakes. Who likes to make mistakes? Not me. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t.
Thinking about mistakes, I got thinking, also, about perfection — perhaps because perfection is located in my mind somewhere out there in the opposite realm from that of mistakes. When I was in elementary school, two boys (whose names will be withheld to protect the guilty) made my life very unpleasant with their teasing, and rather oddly, what they were teasing me about was being “too perfect.” It was ridiculous. I was not perfect and I knew it, and so did they, but they saw it got my goat and that must have been fun for them.
But I look back and try to see what they were up to with that “perfect” thing. I got good grades; that must have been annoying. I had the good fortune to live in a nice house, but then again, so did they. I had nice parents (theirs seemed fine...); I had a horse (they didn’t, but I very much doubt that they wanted one), and I was way too scared of authority to make waves at school. It was probably a combination of things.
And, looking back on those days, fear of authority did cause me to be on very good behavior in public, but did that make me perfect? No. Of course not. But, whatever...Mr. R and Mr. C (as we will refer to them) brutalized me mercilessly. “Perfectly mahhh-velous,” they would say, their malevolent faces scrunching up and pinching over the mimeograph machine, and out at recess, and in the lunch line. And, and, and. They were like rattlesnakes; they were everywhere. They were my cross to bear.
Looking back, I think all of this served to create in me a determination to never ever appear to anyone to be too “perfect” (whatever exactly that meant, and again, I wasn’t entirely sure) ever again. It was a setup for pain. I got that. And if one were to search for a blessing woven into the anxiety and horror of those middle-school years, I suppose it would be an enhanced appreciation on my part for...well, for mistakes.
There is something sacred about mistakes. When I was choosing a denomination, back in divinity school in the early 80s, I found myself drawn not to the denominations that involved pomp and ritual, chalices and incense, shiny shoes and tailored attire (“perfection”), but to those that were a little rougher around the edges, a little scruffier, places where the altar cloths were a little askew. Because, really, I do not like a lot of fuss. Especially when it comes to gathering together and God. Fuss (an activity in which one engages in order to achieve a degree of perfection) just seems to put people on edge. Which is not, to me, what it is all about.
I celebrate mistakes. Not just mine, but yours; not just yours, but mine. Why? Because mistakes are reminders that we are human. All of us, no matter what you think or would like to think, make mistakes. It is crazy to pretend that we don’t. Spiritually speaking, the truth is that it isn’t about acting or being or looking perfect. You don’t have to dress up to belong. We are born into this life naked and screaming, and I am sure that it is really okay as far as the universe is concerned that we come as we are. And we come, sorry to tell you, with flaws. Beautiful, horrifying, terrible, common, uncommon, tragic, hilarious flaws. All of us. And I have noticed over the years when people take the risk and reveal their imperfections or make a mistake and achieve the same result, something magic often happens. Things get warmer. More comfortable. Funnier. Safer. When we are willing to reveal who we really are, others tend to become more accepting of life and of themselves, and of others...more at ease in their own lives, in their own skin.
My friend (she has asked me to refer to her here as Kittykat) has recently been having problems with keys. (They disappear, they are not where she put them, they don’t work, etc. She has also been having, for several months, the same issue, I might add, with her cell phone.) This past week, she called me to report another incident. “Okay,” her voicemail said. “I am actually getting a little worried about myself now. I think I am losing it. This morning, I was trying to get to work, and I locked not only my car keys but my house keys inside the house. I had to break in. I had a spare key hidden somewhere, but I lost that. My neighbor had to come over and hold the ladder while I climbed into my bathroom window. I’m on my way to work now. I had to rip through the screen. I would have taken a video, but I can’t find my cell phone. Call me. Bye.” Maybe you had to have been there, maybe you have to know Kittykat, but this call made my day. Why? Because I realized that my day, though hectic and off-kilter since morning, was not as bad as I’d thought. Also, I think K’s call helped me to see that I am not alone in my imperfect handling of life and its hurdles. Plus, I laughed, which is always healing. I laughed all by myself, driving in my car down Spear Street. Whatever had been going on with me before I heard K’s message, after I’d heard it my own idiocies and shortcomings were tolerable...funny, even...bathed all of a sudden in a happier, warmer light. It reminded me of something my friend Claire used to say, when the toddlers’ spaghetti had tumbled down their necks and shirts to the restaurant rug below, when we’d found we’d been traveling one hour the wrong way trying to get back home from Montreal: “It’s a story!”
And while we’re on the subject...a few summers ago, I was asked to perform the wedding of our babysitter, H, and her fiancé, R. The ceremony was to be held at Kingsland Bay. My kids were small, they loved H and R, and my then-tiny daughter was to be the flower girl, so the whole family headed down to the shore-side wedding. We arrived early and found a spot in the shade under a tree to wait. The day was perfect, the guests were milling about peacefully, and I was going over my script, feeling a little nervous, hoping everything would go smoothly. We had about ten minutes before start time. Suddenly, one of my kids (the oldest wasn’t more than six) looked down at my feet. “Mommy,” he said, “why are you wearing two different kinds of shoes?”
One thing I have developed over time, I think I have had to, is a survival brain. I am sometimes amazed by how fast my mind can think in a catastrophe. And this was, indeed, a catastrophe. Or so it seemed. So I thought. I had ten minutes, and my shoes didn’t match.
Luckily, my car is usually a complete mess, with way too many things in it that should have been removed and put away long ago. Because of this fatal flaw, two things I found in the way back of the car on H and R’s wedding day were two pink flip-flops, a right and a left, which belonged not to the kids, but to me. I found the groom, and informed him of the last-minute footwear change. He smiled (I think he actually laughed) and said that he was fine with being married by a flip-flopclad officiant, and that he was sure that H would be. Perhaps I am reading too much into all this, but I could swear that our short footwear conversation seemed to calm him, or maybe it just distracted him from that age-old fear that the wedding ceremony wouldn’t be perfect. In a sense, one might argue that I had already blown that one, but so it went. And I will bet you that, when H and R think back to their wedding day, they smile at the memory that the minister wore, they weren’t dreaming, pink flip-flops. Either that or they have forgotten.
So, in the end, I say: celebrate your mistakes. And, for God’s sake, don’t keep them to yourself. Share them. Toast them. They are, whether you think so or not, icing on what can sometimes be a rather dry and bitter cake. They are gifts. That is what I think, anyway. I think that mistakes are a gift to a world full of people who often fall into the very bad and distracting habit of taking themselves too seriously. As I read somewhere, probably on someone’s bumper sticker: “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” Share your mistakes. Help the world lighten up, and recall that it is really all right to be who we are, in all our glory and dorkiness.