Ripples #1216: Inevitability of Imperfection
Sep 12, 2022
PEBBLE
There’s no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.
-Ziad Abdelnour, shared by Jody at NWTC in Green Bay, WI
BOULDER
What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from achieving personal perfection but from understanding the inevitability of imperfection and pardoning those who also fall short of it.
-Barbara Kingsolver, shared by Cindy in Beaver Dam, WI
PONDER
I’ll say up front that if you’re not a fan of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s tendency to write circular stories that loop around and reference themselves in the plot (see Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.), you may want to strangle me by the end of this ponder.
To say what I want to say, I need to go back a few weeks to the the typo in Ripples #1214 Times of Transformation that ended up being the topic of last week’s Ripples #1215: Struggles vs. Wiggles.
#1215 ended up coming together quickly because I was still thinking about the oopsie from Ripples #1214 when I sat down to work on it. The moment I spied the silly, wiggly quotes in my finalist pile…well, I knew I could lighten up and have some fun. The ponder poured out so smoothly and quickly that I assumed it fell into the “perfectly fine but not stellar” category of Ripples issues that usually get few responses.
Well, I was wrong! About three times the normal amount of responses poured in, many from people who had never written in before. Some were simply sharing how much they enjoyed reading Ripples; a few of them included stories about how their own oopsies had helped them find their way back to humor and/or humility. One of the responses was from Jody who included the quote we feature as today’s Pebble.
So when it came time to pull together Ripples #1216, it seemed natural to share all of this with you, and to also say thank you. Thank you for the enthusiastic curiosity you muster when Ripples arrives in your inbox or newsfeed each week; thank you for encouraging me with your occasional replies, and thank you for your patience with my inevitable imperfection. May you ripple similar amounts of compassion and kindness inward toward yourself this week, and also outward to each of the imperfect souls you’ll inevitably encounter in this oopsie-filled world we’re living in.
Peace,
Paul
P.S. I’m spending this week with my Mustang Pals at Cal Poly, so I’ve already assembled Ripples #1217 to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of…well, I’ll tell you next week. 🙂
