Letting Go of Perfection

I learned an important lesson today, about perfection and how important it isn’t. I was working on a project (that might make it’s way onto this site soon) and part of it involved painting straight lines. My daughter really wanted to help, but I really wanted it to be perfect. A lot of people were going see it and my pride was definitely in the way – I knew that her lines wouldn’t be that straight. I didn’t want to quash her desire to help though, so I told her I’d do the edges and she could fill in the middle, and of course even then the edges got painted over, drips got onto other parts of the fabric and it was anything but perfect.

As we painted together, I managed to keep my inner perfectionist in check and didn’t say anything about the ‘mistakes’ and you know what? The project turned out great. It will do its job of blocking the wind, it will look cuter than it would without being painted and best of all it’s a project we did together that we can both be proud of – and that’s better than perfection any day.