I had a great art teacher once.
It was in elementary school, and she was teaching us to draw bodies. I’ve always been a people pleaser, which obviously influenced my life at school. I worked my hardest in classes, striving for perfection, and often became frustrated when I couldn't achieve satisfying results.
I remember trying over and over again to draw the correct lines, growing bitter and erasing and erasing. Fortunately, my art teacher was right over my shoulder to teach me an important lesson.
“Don’t erase the other one, just draw a new line over it.”
It went against every fiber in my being, but I did it. I did it for the rest of my drawings. None of the lines were perfect, but together, somehow, all of the imperfect lines made one perfect one.
I had a great writing teacher once.
It was the first semester of my college career, and we were learning the basics. We read an excerpt from “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott called “Shitty First Drafts.” My teacher shared a very important piece of advice.
“Write drunk, and edit sober.”
It went against every bone in my body to not make a detailed, organized outline and to edit each word with scrupulous care as I went along. I couldn’t even dare to type any sentences that didn’t have perfect structure and an important role in the piece. But somehow, as I sat down to write for the class, I was able to produce some great ideas by just typing anything that came to my mind—anything at all, no matter how absurd.
I had a great creativity teacher once.
It was last semester and my life was busier than ever. I had joined a new group on campus, got a new, more demanding job, and had to adjust to living on my own in a new apartment, making my own meals, and commuting to and from school each day. Undoubtedly, things were messy. But my creativity teacher gave our class a challenge.
“Embrace the messiness,” she said.
Embrace the messiness? She clearly doesn’t understand, I thought. I’m constantly trying to rid my life of messiness. I try to keep things neat and clean: my schedule, my grades, my living space, my heart, and you want me to embrace messiness?
Yes, she did. And so did my art teacher and my writing teacher, because they knew something that I didn’t.
Day in and day out we strive for perfection. We strive to draw that perfectly curved line, to write a great story or essay without having to go through a shitty first draft, to organize our lives in avoidance of chaos. But we don’t always get a chance to erase the line, to revise our first drafts, or to coordinate every detail of our lives. When we strive for perfection in ourselves, our lives, and in others we will always be disappointed.
But when we encounter beauty in the imperfect, when we let our ideas flow without restriction, when we welcome disarrangement, only then can we create something truly exquisite.
There is beauty in flaws, in imperfections, in notes sung off key, in crooked lines, and shitty first drafts.
My teachers knew something I didn’t: life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
