Gramercy

A postcard of a girl perched high on her tip-toes with arms outstretched as if ready for flight, long, blond hair and a cape whipping in the wind stirs me.  Pushing the holiday cards aside, I tell myself I don’t have time for this creative diversion, it should wait until ordinary time, but I can’t help myself.  The caption I see in my head is “sometimes I wish this world didn’t need so much saving.”  My superhero tendencies, blended with the pure exhaustion I feel over some of my futile capers means this spark must be stoked to life.

 

I start with pencil on paper and painstakingly line her out.  When I think I’m ready for ink, I find four black pens for varying line width, and go over my graphite.  I’ve captured her, but I’m not satisfied.  Out comes the tracing paper.  Hours slip by like minutes. I lose track of how many times and ways my pens travel over her silhouette.

 

The new wisdom we’re speaking around learning is that the best education comes from failures, although I don’t think this is really news.  Maybe we’re just becoming courageous enough to say it out loud. Asking the right questions, I’m told, is more powerful than having all of the answers.  So if it’s becoming more than okay to try and to fail, to be wrong, why are we still rewarding perfection and being right? 

The best students at the top of the class are the ones who have all of the answers, those who get the perfect papers.  The business leaders deemed most successful have the happiest clients and bring in the most revenue. Yet, when I think about the optimal training ground for any leader, where it is they find their grit, it’s in those challenging places where the unhappy clients live, where growing the business seems impossible, and where sometimes the only resolution is to sever the relationship. It’s where we fall down, pick ourselves up, and keep moving on without any expectation of ever seeing a reward.

In a world filled with opportunities to start over, to correct an error, right a wrong, to ask forgiveness, I wish the shroud of unspoken aversion around admitting mistakes and imperfection would fall away, so that we all can feel the freedom and relief that comes with accessing the escape hatch into next time. Instead, our kids still feel really vulnerable admitting to a bad grade, adults fear for their jobs acknowledging bad outcomes in the workplace and lots of us agonize over admitting shortcomings to those we love.

Me, I don’t know who I am without second chances, the opportunity to trace over those same lines again and again until I get it right, or right enough.  Without the option to try again, I wouldn’t be living the life I’m living today.  I’ve experienced failures in every possible arena and I’m still standing, poised for flight.

And so on this feast of giving thanks, I’m grateful that every minute of every day offers the opportunity to learn from each step I take to get me to where I stand.  I’m grateful that my flaws can be forgiven, that my course can be corrected, that my actions can be amended.  Because when there are second, third . . . hundredth chances, we’re free to take the risks we need to in order to fully live.

She’s still not perfect, my girl of the flowing curls and flapping cape.  And she never will be, no matter how many times I draw her. But with every refinement, I become a better artist.  I become a better me.  For this I am grateful.