I’ve been taking some improv classes lately, and having an absolute blast while learning a lot. Including something I now accept as a truism:

Improvisational theater is like boot camp for perfectionists.

Only waaaaaaaaay more fun.

Never in my life have I been so pointedly challenged to loosen up and just try things. To trust that I have creative ideas inside me which will spontaneously emerge when I stop trying so damn hard to dig them up and force them out.

(Yes, I find improv even more challenging in that respect than NaNoWriMo. Though the latter is pretty much the former, done via writing.)

Here’s another truism for you, which is definitely the case in improv.

If you try too hard to be interesting, you’ll probably be boring.

It’s like the folks who try to call out clever titles when the actors ask the audience for a location and a relationship between two people for their next scene. There’s always a wise guy who tries to impress his friends by calling out, “A priest and a nun in a whorehouse!” But the (sad excuse for a) joke is already in the title—there’s nowhere for the actors to take it even if they wanted to.

Interestingly enough, the converse is also true. What you think will be boring is usually pretty interesting.

When I started improv classes, I understood intellectually that I was supposed to relax and go with the flow, but I didn’t know how to actually do it. All my life’s training had been in exactly the opposite direction—prepare well and know exactly what you’re doing when you go into a situation.

In the beginning, this resulted in some spectacularly dull acting on my part. Often it still does.

But if you stick with improv long enough (and I know I’ve only scratched the surface), you begin to have little breakthroughs, and occasionally big ones. I clearly remember the day I had my biggest one so far.

My breakthrough came the day I was told to be deliberately uninteresting.

Our instructor was teaching us to create a “platform”—a quick establishment of place, situation, and relationship when you’re starting a scene. It feels very awkward to stand there making up dialogue with someone on a bare stage when you have no idea where you are or who you are to each other. A platform grounds the players (not to mention the audience, if there is one), giving you something to grab hold of and work with.

So you walk in and pretend to pick up a bowling ball, sight down the lane, and roll. Then you turn around, notice your fellow player walking toward you, and say “Hey, Grandpa, you’re late,” as he mimes lacing up his bowling shoes. Maybe with shaking fingers, if he’s paying attention.

Or your partner walks out and leans against an imaginary railing, looking out over the heads of the audience. You join her holding a couple of “drinks,” hand her one, sigh, and say, “Thanks for inviting me come on this cruise. I really needed a vacation.”

That’s all it takes to know who and where you are before you get to see where the scene takes you.

On this particular day in class, the instructor had us go up in pairs, with one person sitting on the sofa (we do have a few simple props) eating an imaginary meal. (This is called “space-object work.”) The other would simply sit down on the other side of the sofa, pick up an equally imaginary magazine and leaf through it.

That was it. If we were too interesting or started creating a story out of it, she stopped us and had us do it again until we were sufficiently boring.

It was the first time I was ever truly able to relax on stage.

The feeling was tremendously liberating, like a backpack full of iron ore had dropped from my shoulders.

And the weird thing? It was utterly fascinating to watch each other do these simple actions and nothing else.

It’s a strange paradox. We try to be interesting and we’re tiresome. We think we’re doing something incredibly dull and we draw attention.

Why does this happen?

I think it’s because we like the familiar. We like things we can relate to personally. In improv, for instance, most people would rather watch a showdown between the overbearing boss and the fed-up employee than a scene on the planet Zorgon with orange-skinned aliens speaking in gibberish.

This is true in life, too. We like it when things are understandable, relevant, meaningful to us.

We also like it when things are genuine and not forced. And most of us have pretty good B.S. detectors. Don’t you?

In social situations, your insecurity (and don’t worry, we all have it) probably tells you that you need to work hard to fascinate others. But that’s just not true. You don’t need to be the life of the party, constantly telling jokes and outrageous stories. All you need to be appreciated is to be real.

I learned how to relax on stage.

You can do the same on the stage of your life.

Just relax and be your own unique self. Trust me—that’s interesting enough.

Life is one long improvisation. Don’t make it so hard on yourself. You don’t have to deliberately try to be boring, like we did in class…because if you’re simply you, in all your everyday glory, I guarantee you won’t be. You’ll shine.

I’m sick and tired of being good,
I’m tired of doing what I “should.”
When I do what you want me to
The benefits to me are few.

But I’ve been so well trained to fear
What happens if we don’t adhere
To all the rules we’re taught will keep
Us safe from wolves (obedient sheep)

That I’m no longer even sure
Of what I want; I just endure
Days and weeks and months and years
Of subservience to collective fears.

You say that I must earn my pleasures
By dancing to society’s measures,
Following norms I had no choice in making
With most of my waking hours yours for the taking.

But now I’m making a different choice
And listening to my inner voice
That tells me which rules I want to follow
And which make me choke when I try to swallow.

“Everyone does it” is not an excuse
For allowing myself to be seduced
Into a life that’s unfulfilling
In so many ways—I must be willing

To sever my ties to what you have taught me.
I am not the person you’ve always thought me.
The “good little girl” is growing into
A woman committed to learning what’s true

For herself regardless of what she is told.
She’s scared, but determined, and will not be sold
On a story that keeps her inside of your cages.
She wants to be daring and free and courageous

In facing her fear and her anger and doubt
Along with her laughter and joy, letting out
The pressure that’s built up for much too long
By struggling so hard all those years to belong

To a system she never really believed in.
So I’m waving goodbye now, truly leaving
Your heart-grinding tedium far behind,
Unless you’d like to change your mind

And come along, too. I could use some companions
When fording the rivers and crossing the canyons
I’ll surely encounter along the way—
But make your decision. I’m leaving today.

Pace and Kyeli Smith, two of the coolest people I’ve ever met online, do not think small. They have started a revolution, and two days ago, they released a manifesto explaining it. [Click here to view more details]

I dare you to read this and not feel inspired. Seriously.

The Freak Revolution, they say, is a revolution of ideas. From page 21 of the Manifesto:

No guns. No violent uprisings. No protest rallies. No bullshit. Just ideas. World-changing ideas. It has happened before, and it can happen again.

Think about the Renaissance. When the Renaissance swept Europe and then the world, was there a violent uprising? Were any governments overthrown? Were any anti-art monarchs assassinated? No. The creation and transmission of revolutionary ideas fueled the revolution. The ideas swept through the dominant paradigm, causing changes that continue to ripple through our lives.

I agree with Pace and Kyeli that the time is ripe for some bedrock-level changes to our collective way of looking at the world. They say that we are living under the control paradigm, which gives us certain (and often not very pleasant) ideas about how life works. But the very nature of a dominant paradigm is that we’re so immersed in it, we cease to question its underlying assumptions.

The Freak Revolution Manifesto exposes and deconstructs some of those assumptions, and encourages us to think about whether or not they’re actually true.

There is a lot in this 44-page document to think about, but one of the most powerful realizations that emerged for me was this: Because I’ve been a people-pleaser all my life, I’ve internalized the control paradigm so deeply that I’ve often blamed myself for not measuring up. I never even considered that I might be using a flawed yardstick.

Think about it this way. Let’s say I give you a $50,000 gift card to Home Depot, but inform you that you’ve got to get there and back yourself, choose your materials yourself, and arrange for their transportation. Your job? Construct a house which conforms to all state and local building codes (which you’re perfectly free to research at the library or on the Internet, of course) in two weeks, on your own. Could you do it?

I thought not.

So why do we so often feel responsible for equally insane amounts of stuff, remain in denial about the insanity, and feel guilty and ashamed when we can’t handle it all? Where did we get such a deep-seated need to be superwomen and supermen?

You’ve got it—the control paradigm, which tells us that only when we get a solid grip on everything in our lives simultaneously can we achieve a sense of inner peace. Which is impossible.

In their wonderful manifesto, Pace and Kyeli write about a different paradigm of connection. One in which we connect to our own hearts and souls, with each other, with the world around us, and with the Infinite. One which makes us feel happy, fulfilled, and balanced.

What I really like is that they don’t just talk about all this from a negative point of view, or in general terms, in a way that leaves you angry, frustrated, and thinking, “Great, but now what do I do?” The manifesto goes into quite a few concrete suggestions about how each one of us can start to make real, positive changes in our lives to disconnect from the control paradigm. To unplug from the unrealistic, hurtful, and demoralizing assumptions that we likely imbibed with our mothers’ milk.

And don’t be put off by the word “freak.” Pace and Kyeli use it in a pretty inclusive way. If there is any way in which you feel you don’t fit in or would like to buck the status quo, you can join this revolution.

Please, please read this manifesto. (You can read it online or download it: [Click here to view more details].) I think you’ll be very glad you did. I certainly was.

What excuses have you made today?

Nope, I’m not getting all judgmental on you. Especially since I just paused to ask myself the same question and thought of several. 

It’s easy to have an explanation for everything, isn’t it? You bought the dress because you’re going to need a nice one for Maria’s wedding anyway. I had to deviate from my food plan because the seminar was in a hotel with only one restaurant, and my choices were limited. What? Oh, sure, I could have ordered a salad, but the lettuce didn’t look fresh. 

The difference between what we say we value and what we actually do sets up something called cognitive dissonance. We feel uncomfortable because we know we’re not walking our talk. Our minds naturally search for ways to close that gap so we can feel good about ourselves again. Excuses, explanations and rationalizations make convenient mortar for filling in the chinks and shoring up the walls of our self-esteem.

The problem is, all that mortaring takes energy, and the wider the gaps, the harder the job. This can easily kick off a long downward spiral of frustration, depression, and shame. You want to live in certain ways and do certain things, but you seem to have less and less energy to do them. Your talk and your walk drift further and further apart. And your walls need even more repair. 

So how can you lay down the trowel and quit mortaring? Here’s one idea: 

Figure out what you value. 

This is tough to do because of all the socialization we undergo. Our parents and families are our first teachers, and we absorb their viewpoints and priorities automatically. Teachers, religious leaders and other authority figures dip their oars in as well. The mass media start pounding away at us as soon as we’re able to begin comprehending their messages.

And we’re not even aware that most of this is happening. Which means we’ve pretty much inherited an entire value system unconsciously.

To start repairing the gaps between your values and your actions, it helps to get some clarity on what those values are. Which ones are truly your own, and which came bundled with the software? 

Are you up for a quick exercise? Grab a sheet of paper and quickly write out a list of the things you think are most important in life—the core ideals which form the bedrock of your personal value system. Aim for about 10-15 items, or whatever emerges in about three or four minutes of writing. Go ahead, do it now—I’ll wait.

(whistling some cheery on-hold music)

Okay, take a look at your list. I’ll bet it contains many items such as (in no particular order):

• Love
• Happiness
• Family
• Religion/Spirituality
• Honesty
• Hard Work
• Excellence
• Security
• Courage
• Compassion
• Friendship
• Gratitude
• Determination
• Generosity
  . . . and the list goes on.

These are the types of “old standards” most of us inherit, and they seem so obvious that we rarely question them or think about them deeply. (Love? Of course! Who wouldn’t want love in their lives?) Plus—and this is key—we know at some level that it’s safe to espouse these beliefs. They’re socially acceptable because they are dictated to us by society. 

Let me be clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these values. In fact, most of us would agree they’re very important. They’re just . . . a little vague, don’t you think?

Let’s say you wrote down “courage,” for example. Sounds great—but what exactly does it mean to you? Not backing down in a physical confrontation? Getting over your fear of public speaking? Standing up for yourself and drawing healthy boundaries in a relationship? Going (oh, no!!!) to the dentist?

There is no judgment attached to any answers here. (Well, as long as you don’t value torturing living creatures or engaging in destructive hurtfulness, there’s not.) You just need to figure out what the stuff you’ve probably been parroting all your life really means to you, if anything.

Check your list. Is there anything you wrote down because you felt you should? Be honest. Maybe you don’t actually value hard work, or family. That’s okay! It doesn’t mean you’ll never work hard or spend quality time with your family—just that these are not going to be primary motivators for you. Maybe you feel you should go to church or spend time in meditation, but deep down it’s just not fulfilling to you. Again, no judgment. You’re only admitting this to yourself anyway, and I promise the world won’t end based on what you think and feel.

Speaking of feelings, the relief you feel when you accept what is true for you is immensely liberating. Maybe for the first time ever, you’re in a clear and conscious space with this stuff. And it feels wonderful. 

Now add the values that you’d really like to have on your list, but were afraid wouldn’t look good. Rest and relaxation, anyone? Fun? Freedom? Travel? A different religious or spiritual perspective than you were raised with? Go ahead—this is your list, and no one else ever has to see it. 

Congratulations! You’ve just taken a major step toward congruency between the things you say are important to you  and the things you do. Because it’s a whole lot easier to walk your talk when you honestly believe in the things you’re saying.

(HINT: Even if you didn’t actually make a written list, I encourage you to mull this over for the next few days. Your unconscious mind can do some amazing things when you’re not looking, and you may be treated to an epiphany or two! If not, you’ll have dug a little deeper into your own motivations. That’s always a good thing.)

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the term wabi-sabi.

No, it’s not something you would order at your neighborhood sushi bar. Nor is it a new character in a manga comic book. It’s a Japanese compound word which describes an entire philosophy and aesthetic in four simple syllables.

You’ve got to love the Japanese for being so elegantly efficient.

A little Internet research reveals the inevitable drama and conflict—some say that the two words wabi and sabi should never be used together. (Neither word translates directly into English. Wabi holds connotations of loneliness, rustic simplicity, humility, and quietude; sabi refers to imperfection, the aging process, and the interest these lend to things.) Others decry the new popularization of wabi-sabi in the West, and its commoditization as a new “style” in architecture, interior design, and the like.

So here’s my disclaimer. I’ve spent maybe 30-45 minutes looking into the term, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m not going to do justice to the subtlety and richness of the concepts involved. But since the object of this blog is to highlight the practice of imperfection, it feels like it would be very humble-and-imperfect of me to continue.

Of all the discussions I found online, this is my favorite. From the first two paragraphs:

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered—and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. . . . Wabi-sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered. . . . It’s a richly mellow beauty that’s striking but not obvious, that you can imagine having around you for a long, long time . . .

I started this blog to talk about perfection and imperfection, but in my mind, they keep bringing me back to concepts like clarity, simplification, and authenticity. There’s a close relationship between these things and allowing myself to let go of my need for perfection, and that’s why I was excited to find a strongly resonant term that ties them all together.

But there’s also a paradox. I have a personal aesthetic that is very wabi-sabi on its surface—my dream house, for instance, would contain lots of grainy wood and irregular stone and earthy-looking fabric and soft, natural tones and comfy furniture you could put your feet on, and very little plastic and shimmer and glitter and ruler-straight lines and loud colors and modular, matched fixtures.

My desire to pare down my personal possessions to only those things I truly need, love, or both also seems to fit the wabi-sabi philosophy very well.

But I’m forever wanting to declutter, organize, buy things that look artfully distressed, and otherwise force-fit my space and my belongings into the spare, uncluttered, and peacefully serene picture I have in my head.

In other words, I think I have a romanticized notion of imperfection.

Ouch.

Rather than trying to fit myself into an idealized image of what I think imperfection “should” look like, wouldn’t it be more authentic and humble and mentally/emotionally quiet and peaceful of me to simply accept that my space doesn’t look like I want it to, and make changes slowly as I can without beating myself up over the fact that it’s all . . . erm, not perfectly imperfect yet?

This new revelation actually came about as I was writing this post. Yay! Fresh insight! Now I just have to let it percolate for a while.

I guess what it all means is that (cough) I would like to lobby for making wabi-sabi not just a hobby, but a part of my regular jobbie.

(And if I haven’t just scared you off with that, feel free to comment!)

A friend recently sent me a link to this winning entry from a portrait competition.

Check out the artist statement. Then go back up and look at Sam’s earnest little face.

When I was a child, I used to wonder about the dandelions, too. I was afraid of the spiky-looking leaves–I refused to step on them, and I remember one day making my father carry me over a stretch of grass in a park because there was nowhere to step without walking on dandelions–but I always thought the flowers were pretty.

I still do. Cheerful miniature suns smiling up from lawns and fields, they always cheer me up. And how cool is it when the blossoms go to seed? How many other flowers can you have fun blowing apart into the wind when they reach maturity and are ready to reproduce?

Who decided that dandelions are weeds? That roses, for example, are the epitome of flowery “perfection”?

Who gets to decide that people like Sam are less than perfect? That they are, in fact, disposable? (“‘Are you going to keep him?’ a nurse asked.” Were you as horror-struck as I was when I read that she actually said this, let alone thought it?)

So many of us pursue the ideal of perfection in our lives, at least in part because we’re conditioned to do so. From earliest childhood, we’re bombarded by unending messages from our parents, families, teachers, authority figures, and friends telling us what we should do, be, own, look like, and act like–messages which we all receive from the mass media and pass back and forth among ourselves as if they are gospel truth.

If perfection means keeping up with these perpetual, completely unreasonable, and sometimes conflicting demands, then perfection is impossible. But that doesn’t t stop us from wanting to achieve it, so we live in denial of the real truth and keep pushing, pushing, pushing. This usually leads to low self-esteem because we feel like we never measure up to all the standards that we “should”–and, all too often, to burnout, frustration, anger, and bitterness.

Personally, I prefer the definition of perfection that I found in the first entry on this page. First entry, from the Random House dictionary, meaning 3:

perfection – a perfect embodiment or example of something.

Doesn’t that take the pressure off? I don’t have to look like the model on the cover of that magazine in the checkout line (forget the fact that she doesn’t even really look like that, either) to be perfectly me. You don’t have to be as saintly as Mother Teresa to be perfectly worthy of love. Sam doesn’t have to have the mental acuity of his peers to be a perfect embodiment of Samness.

I can live with that definition of perfection.

Think what would happen if everyone did.

I was going to write about something else today, but Chris Zydel’s wonderful post changed my mind. Check it out—she talks about why reframing the whole concept of making mistakes is a very good idea. I love her weed analogy. And her allusion to the doctrine of the Church of Mistakes. I know I’m a member of that congregation.

Chris reminds us how important it is to remember to be kind to yourself when you make mistakes and things don’t turn out the way your judgmental mind hoped they would. It’s also helpful to remember the good that can come out of your mistakes (or the things you think are mistakes). Like learning. New insights.

And sometimes, the Happy Accident.

One of my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh stories (I almost typed “when I was a kid,” then I realized it’s still one of my favorite Pooh stories) is the one about Eeyore’s birthday. Eeyore, as you may remember, is a rather gloomy and depressed donkey. He doesn’t expect much from life, so “not much” is usually what he gets. One year on his birthday, Pooh and Piglet each bring him a birthday present. Pooh’s gift is a jar of honey, which he (being a Bear of Very Little Impulse Control When it Comes to Hunny) unthinkingly eats along the way. Piglet’s gift is a big red balloon, which he falls upon and bursts while running to Eeyore’s place.

Each presents his gift rather shamefacedly, but Eeyore is entranced by the way the burst balloon fits into the pot perfectly. Pooh and Piglet leave him happily dropping the balloon into the honey pot, then pulling it out again, then dropping it in again . . .

Quite by accident, they had given Eeyore the best birthday present ever.

I remember a happy accident of my own. One year during college, I stayed in town for the summer semester. I’d been working hard on my honors thesis and other very cerebral matters of (*cough*) lofty import (*cough*), so I decided to get my hands into some soothing, 100% physical clay. I took a wheel-thrown pottery class and had a blast—so much that I frequently went to the studio after hours to practice on my own.

One day I decided to use the big, heavy kick wheel (where you kick a very heavy round stone attached by a vertical axle to the potter’s wheel, making them rotate together) rather than one of the electric ones (where you step on a pedal to make the wheel spin, and the speed varies with your foot pressure). I’d never used the kick wheel before, so I intended to make a simple bowl.

As I worked the clay, it collapsed too far inward. At first I was upset, but then wondered what else the clay might want to become. It turned (pun absolutely intended) out to be the best mug I ever made, and I still drink out of it today. It’s not perfect—I didn’t know much about making handles, so my mug handle is sort of fragile and irregular-looking.

But because of its beginnings as a proto-bowl, my mug has a very thick bottom. Coupled with the inward-curving sides, it holds heat like no other mug I’ve owned. And there’s nothing like the pleasure of sipping hot tea or coffee from a piece of pottery you’ve thrown, glazed, and fired yourself. It means more to me than any “perfect” commercially produced mug I could buy from a store.

What kinds of happy accidents have you had? I’d love to hear about them!