Where are the spaces you can practice not being perfect?
This is about our time with our horses, but to get there, I’m going to speak to you of art.
For the last thirty years, I held the belief that I wasn’t good at drawing. Not only ‘not good at it’ but any movement towards creating art beyond a casual doodle made me quite cross.
The clear vision in my head never materialised, and I found the experience left me frustrated and tight, rather than free and expressive (the qualities I would have liked to have brought to the page).
The thing was, I really wanted to draw. My grandmother was a botanical artist, and I wanted to cultivate similar skills to match those I so appreciate. My heart carried this desire as a yearning. So, a couple of years back- seemingly randomly and despite these past experiences- I decided to begin.
I can’t tell you what exactly brought about this change- to go from someone who never draws to someone who draws every day- but I credit it to the work I teach generally.
*I* had changed, my perspective had changed, and I had cultivated a skill which is the most important one that you can have: the willingness to let yourself learn.
The willingness to let yourself *do* without caring what the end result looks like.
And I really started to have fun. Drawing, painting, sketching is a space where I can practice not being perfect. And I’ve found myself asking, how can I bring this ease to my writing? How can I bring this ease to my horses?
That experience- of play, of experimentation, of leaving something that clearly isn’t working and starting again- now lives in my body as a felt sense and I carry her with me wherever I go.
When I first asked myself this question- where are the spaces you can practice not being perfect? – it hit me that creating art for me is now that place. The worst thing that can happen is I make something that’s visually not appealing. And I can meet any thoughts or judgements I have about myself along the way and reconcile them in a space where nothing or no-one is compromised.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately how many of us have our horses as the sole focus of our passions or “hobbies” (I know they are so much more than this, but I will use now imperfect words to illustrate what I mean). I wonder how healthy this is. It seems like a lot of pressure.
I think how it is we need places and spaces to show up in free flow. To recognize the not-good-enough-tightness, and the perfectionist demons. To greet them with kindness, then turn up the music and cover them in paint.
It’s easy for us to say ‘I don’t expect to be perfect’ with my horse. I don’t either. But with our horses, we do have a duty of care. Our actions *do* matter.
And it’s worth thinking about how to embrace those shadow parts of ourselves far away from their side.
It’s worth thinking about the spaces you move in that allow you to be truly free, and if you don’t have them, how to create them.
If you have something you avoid because you have told yourself you’re not good at it, that’s probably a solid clue of where to start.
