Anyway: or Confessions of a recovering perfectionist

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

Sitting on a leather sofa, sipping water and wiping tears, I presented her with my angsty questions. I looked at her proper grown-up mantel piece and knew that I was supposed to be grown up by now, in my mid-twenties.

She pulled her fingers through her hair, thought a bit, and then said it: “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

I nodded, and then did a double-take – hang on…?

She smiled at me, recognising her former self in me.

“I did a medical placement in Africa,” she told me. “There are children dying of all kinds of preventable diseases. You’re used to Western facilities and protocols. You’ve got vaccinations, but they’re out of date, and the needles’ cleanliness is questionable. But there are children dying. What do you do?”

“You vaccinate them anyway,” I said.

She nodded.

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

*****

I hate New Year’s Resolutions. I used to love them. I would make them all the time as a child and into my twenties – but now? Now I am tired of them.

Alece Ronzino has a great alternative to New Year Resolutions. Instead of a list or a new regime, pick one word to shape not what you do but the way that you do things. Just one thing to focus on, a guiding principle. Could I do this instead?

I looked at the other words people had chosen: ask, unashamed, freedom, hope, light – such soaring, majestic words. How can you choose a word knowing you’re setting yourself up for failure? I chickened out.

And then it hit me again.

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

What if I could just for once integrate my knowledge of God’s grace into my practice? What if I could just do things, try things, knowing that whether they succeed or fail it is still worth doing them?

Here is a tumble of my resolutions along these lines:

• Do an online creative writing course knowing that I can’t really commit to these kinds of things because my health is unreliable. And sign up anyway.
• Stop doing an online writing course, knowing that doesn’t disqualify me from writing, or even writing well.
• Write the longer projects. Or start to write the longer projects. Set deadlines, meet them, miss them. Try to write them well. Write them badly. Freak out that I’m the moaniest, clumsiest, most heretical writer in the world. Have a small meltdown. And then do it anyway because an actual real-life mediocre blog post or book is still better than a Nobel Prize-winning imaginary one.
• Start reading the Bible daily properly again and be more disciplined. Wrestle with the word, fall in love with the word. Don’t spend enough time on it, struggle with it. Keep reading it anyway.
• Feel frustrated by the cuts that fall disproportionately on the sick, the disabled, the poor. Feel frustrated that I can’t give more time to activism. Write one letter every so often to my MP, knowing that it will only get answered after about three months, and even then with a dismissively slick party line. Write it anyway, because it’s important to speak even if you are not sure you will be heard.
• Feel tired at the very thought of having to be thankful for things or keep a thankfulness journal. But want to do it anyway. And maybe end up doing it for three months instead of a full year, end up with 300 gifts instead of 1000. That’s okay. There’s freedom in the failure.
• Remember that God doesn’t guarantee healing, and that His goodness is not contingent on whether or not I get better. Know that hope is sometimes more painful to carry than acceptance. Ask for healing anyway.

Do lots of things half-excellently instead of one thing brilliantly – because there are too many important things in life to indulge in excelling just at one thing. It is all a juggling act and we are people, not streamlined robots.

Life is an ever-changing sea and sometimes all you can do is keep afloat and that is achievement enough.

Do it anyway. Do it half-well, half-completed, limping and surrendered, leaning on others – because who can truly do any of these things on their own? We all fall, we all stumble, He is the only one who does not grow weary. He is the only one who will not slumber or sleep.

He is faithful and He will do it. His grace is sufficient. There are safety nets – no, not nets – there are everlasting arms to hold me when I trip, when I fall and fail. He knows the beginning and the end, He is the Alpha and the Omega, and He knows that I do not know the start and the finish, I am flailing in the middle. He is smiling as I cycle without stabilisers. He is good.

*****

So here’s my One Word for 2013 which I present to you with a crazy grin and a little twirl: “Anyway”. It must be the least majestic, vague word that anyone has chosen. And it’s February – more than a month late for the exercise.

It’s perfect. It’s ridiculous. I’m gonna use it anyway.

Over to you:

• What is your one word for 2013?
• In which areas of your life do you need to speak the phrase, ‘if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly?’

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