It is so easy to fall into the trap of trying to achieve perfection. Of judging my efforts at creation to be not worthy of being placed where others can see them, at least ‘not yet’. Often, it is only an externally imposed deadline that forces me to ever show something I’ve done. But I’m beginning to think that perfection is a myth. That perfection is, in fact, unattainable. The basic problem with perfection is that it is subjective. What I consider to be the ‘perfect’ meal is different from what you consider to be the ‘perfect’ meal. But this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Just because we can’t both have the same meal and have it be perfect for both of us, doesn’t mean that I can’t have the perfect meal ‘for me’...
Actually, I think it does mean this. The perfect meal doesn’t merely vary with the person, it also varies with that person’s mood. And it varies with other parts of a person’s experience; on a hot day I have a different perfect meal than on a cold day. But I should still be able to have the perfect meal for me, right now. The meal that is perfect for me in the moment that I have it. Sure. Maybe. But as soon as I’ve had it, the perfect meal for me will have changed. The perfect meal within the context of having just eaten the meal that was perfect for me at the time that I had it is different than the meal I just had.
This may sound like ‘just semantics’, and at other times this assertion may be true of arguments I make (I do so love those semantics). However, the problem is that we aren’t talking about the perfect meal. We aren’t talking about food. We aren’t talking about an experiential event. Instead, we are talking about the creative process. As an event, a perfect meal can be perfect the moment it starts or the moment it ends (or possibly both) and be remembered for its perfection. As a process, creativity is ongoing. It ends when the creator says it ends. Or not even then; a creator can change their mind and go back to viewing the process as unfinished. Further, finishing a creative process takes time and effort. There is a logistical problem to finishing a work. There is a process of placing the creation in a context where it can find an audience. And as this process of ‘publishing’ is non-instantaneous, there is always the possibility of finding imperfection in the creation during the process of ‘publishing’.
Where does this imperfection come from? Part of it is that we are always changing who we are in terms of our mood, our environment and our desires. But as creators we are also different after having gone through a creative process in one very important way that directly reveals imperfection in our creations. When we are creating, we are learning about the creative process. We are finding new challenges to surmount in our work and figuring out how to surmount them. This is true of any flow activity; we maintain our own involvement by finding challenges that are neither too easy (boring) nor too hard (frustrating) and then learning how to deal with this new challenge.
I argue that learning how to overcome a challenge is a recipe for imperfection. The process of learning is experimental in nature. In order to learn, we try things out to see if they work. Then we observe what we’ve done (or are doing) to see what is working and what is not. This second part is very important; in order to learn, something has to be not working. We need some behaviour or process to correct. We need to have failed in some way, to have made mistakes, to have been imperfect. If we do not have these experiences of improvement, then we haven’t chosen a good challenge for our flow experience. We have chosen something we already know how to master. We have chosen a process that is boring and we won’t choose to repeat it.
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