Did you ever read that story about how Piglet joined Pooh-bear on a Woozle hunt? You should, if you haven't, even if you aren't a child and even if you don't have children and don't otherwise have any reason to read to them. The whole of Winnie-the-Pooh is lovely. Anyhow, I digress far too soon, the point here is that as they hunt the Woozle, Pooh and Piglet become increasingly nervous that this Woozle may turn out to be a Hostile Animal. And as the hunt progresses, Piglet finds out he's a bit scared they will actually find what they are after, Pooh remembers he's a bit dim, and both remain oblivious to the fact that the track they are on guarantees they will never find what they are looking for. Because, in the story anyhow, the Woozles, or, as it might be, Wizzles, aren't on this path at all, and Pooh and Piglet are out there tracking their own prints, having circled a spinney of trees over and over and over again.
Perfectionism (this is an essay about perfectionism) can be a bit that way. The same silly loop where we play the part of both the frightened little Piglet and silly, old Pooh, the Bear of No Brain at All. Going around and around the same first sentence, first paragraph, first chapter - editing and editing and editing away in search of the Woozle, or, rather, as it was, the Perfect Turn of Phrase to get the masterpiece in our mind out onto paper. And we ARE a bit too dim to realize that we are going in circles and never really getting anywhere because it FEELS like we are doing something meaningful. And we ARE a bit too scared to actually capture the Perfect Wording because that means two things. One: now the thing can be JUDGED. Two: now we have to MOVE ON. We have to start the second sentence, second paragraph, second chapter and not only will it be a whole other journey through the forest, it'll be in such shambles in comparison to the bit of perfection we just tore ourselves away from that by comparison it will be utter shit. The unfinished bit remains safe. And while the fear of finding what we are after keeps us trampling our own past, we avoid actually getting anywhere. Instead, we wear fear masked as progress.
The fear keeps us stuck. The fear of being seen. The fear of finding out. The fear of being judged, by ourselves or by others. The fear of not being as good as we thought we might be. The fear that the core of our identity itself is false. The dim-mindedness keeps us moving, unaware that we are fearful at all. So, onward we go, around and around and around the spinney of trees, tracking a Woozle. And we've done it for years, or at least I have. Because even worse than the fear I'll be judged harshly is the fear that I WON'T ACTUALLY EVER CREATE ANYTHING, and so I stay here, around the trees, hoping somehow to find the thing that can't be found here. The fear itself propagates the thing I fear most.
The solution to our fear is not to hide in safety, but rather to become aware of our fear. To name it. It is not retracing our steps, forever covering familiar ground. It is taking a new step in a new direction. Leaving the first sentence to its own life. Leaving every next sentence to grow or die on its own. Realizing that it is going to be frightening but leaving that old spinney and heading forward to break New Ground anyway. Leave the forest we've been through to sit undisturbed. Explore the woods, feel the moss on the trees and wet your hands in the stream. Chuck a pinecone at your sister. See what's about, have a hum, get to the end of the thing and draw a map. Now we can finally see the natural paths: which connect, which go nowhere, and which require a bridge between them. Once we've discovered its shape, and our understanding of the landscape has had time to mature a bit, what is left is an increased clarity around which trees to cut, which to shape, and which still need planting.
They say you can't see the forest for the trees, and if we spend all our time chasing our own tracks, we might never see either. Anyhow, Woozles, or, perhaps, as is often the case, Wizzles, aren't anywhere we've already been. If we want to actually catch one, we've got to follow fresh ground, hand in hand with our fear.