“A wise person once said that the goal of the masculine principle is perfection, and the goal of the feminine principle is completion. If you are perfect, you cannot be complete, because you must leave out all the imperfections of your nature. If you are complete, you cannot be perfect, for being complete means that you contain good and evil, right and wrong, hope and despair. So perhaps it is best to be content with something less than perfection and something less than completion. Perhaps we need to be more willing to accept life as it comes.” - June Singer
This notion - that completion and perfection are inherently at odds, that they contradict each other, has blown my mind.
On top of that, the word complete and the notion of reaching completion is one that has been top of mind for me in recent times.
I still harbour some deep-seated judgement around flightiness, dabbling, dilettantism. (Of myself, as well as of others.) Barbara Sher’s book Refuse to Choose helped start breaking all of that down years ago, and of late, I’ve had to put in a lot of work to continue to reprogramme the notion that longevity is the most important yardstick.
Like Jada Pinkett Smith writes in her memoir Worthy (another great expander when it comes to being multipassionate and multipotentialite and who has a pretty dang amazing life story), being ride-or-die was baked into her very early on. That’s a hard thing to shake off even when it winds up hurting you, because it’s so deeply imprinted. Her multiphase journey was a beautiful reminder to me that seeing something through until it no longer holds the same spark, pull, or hold is absolutely valid.
In this episode I touch on:
when the nature of the work you do means you’re never ‘done’
how some of us are wired to prioritise the desire for stability (a losing proposition in an organic, dynamic, seasonal world that’s built on impermanence)
the inevitability of endings and the problem with stasis
Runtime: 5 mins 53 secs, just the right accompaniment to a late night snack even though you’ve already brushed your teeth
