Jennifer Garvey Berger

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

I note that I'm drawn to talking about imperfection as the noise in the house, sort of swirls around us. And I'm I'm thinking about how still I sometimes yearn for things to be impossibly perfect. Totally quiet house, just the right set up, the right amount of light.

And there's something about getting to middle age, getting to live in this big rambling, completely imperfect place with the glorious and completely imperfect people who live here, that somehow imperfection is on my mind.

I was on a on a webinar the other day. And we were talking about what gets in the way of experimentation. And one of the people on the webinar, was Tony. Tony lives there behind that wall. And, and Tony said, I think the thing that gets in the way of my experimenting is my desire for things to be perfect. And every head, you know, all these little tiny Zoom box heads, every head nodded. People saw themselves in that in that idea. And yeah. I just think about how unbelievably boring and, soulless perfection would be.

This summer we had a meeting here in this community, with a fantastic therapist who came and facilitated a process for us to deepen our way of being together. And in that circle, you know we talked very seriously about heavy things that were heavy on us. Things that were our, you know, our deepest insecurities or the ways we bumped up against each other that hurt. Or, things we didn't even like to tell ourselves. And we spoke them in this circle. And you know sometimes people cried, sometimes lots of us cried as people were speaking about these ordinary imperfections. And then at night we would have dinner together around our big table as we do every night. And and I began to notice that the thing that had been so painful and heavy in the morning in our circle by dinner was hilarious. And we would laugh and laugh about these things that in the morning had felt like these shameful or incredibly sore spaces. And in the evening they were these hilarious quirks.

And I wondered whether there would be anything funny at all. Imperfection. It's not funny.

So I think that comes to my mind in a day when the mouse has run across the floor and the dog is trying to dig up the floor mouse and the floors upstairs are so squeaky.

It's a thing we seek, but if we were to find it, it would be awful.

Just kind of a funny, funny thing for us to be seeking.