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Jan Peppler's avatar

I understand this conundrum of your last week well. It happens to me every week.

Ask any dancer about balance- yes. Decades ago, when I kept losing my balance and falling, my dance teacher told me to make the floor my partner. (It was modern dance, obviously). I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Make the floor your partner. Losing balance isn’t a failure, it’s an opportunity. The point is to keep moving ( even when the “movement “ is a pause) and to have fun. Even the things that trip us can be partners in the dance.

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Asha Sanaker's avatar

Beautifully put! I was a modern dancer, too. ❤️ Was thinking as I wrote this also about doing leaps across the floor and how my classmates and I would refer to that brief moment of perfect suspension at the top of the arc of a leap as “the moment of baaahh!” (Not like the bleating of a sheep but more like an expansive exhale of breath). It was only ever a moment. A glorious moment, for sure, but a moment to enjoy while moving in and out of it nonetheless.

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Jan Peppler's avatar

Love this! Reminds me of when a friend tried teaching me to ice skate and I kept falling. He taught me to say "Wheeeee!!!" as I was losing control. Not the same kind of glorious moment as a leap, but certainly helped with transmuting uncomfortable moments. :)

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Rosana Francescato's avatar

OMG, yes to all this! I deal with it so often in my personal life. Like if I eat sugar, which I'm trying not to do, the whole day is shot and I might as well binge on sugar the rest of the day. It's so hard to beat that, seems like a feature of being human.

In my work life (I do clean-energy communications), it manifests so often in ways like "Let's fight this community solar bill because it isn't perfect community solar, even though it will result in more solar than we had before." Some of the activists, people we need really badly and who play a crucial role, are such purists that they can prevent good things from getting done. The affordable housing issue is a great example, as we're dealing with that now in probably all of our cities.

We all need to remind ourselves that things usually aren't black and white, and "embrace complexity and imperfection."

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Asha Sanaker's avatar

Thanks for weighing in, Rosana! Yes, we’ve had similar challenges around wind energy projects near us.

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James Prado Roberts's avatar

The idea of the perfect being the enemy of the good is pervasive in government and politics. I think it so often leads to bad outcomes and inflexibility, even when individuals can mostly agree. It's thought-provoking to see how the idea can also apply a very personal level

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