The Perfectly Imperfect Life

I was scrolling today at a cafe on a rustic fishing island off the Italian coast near Naples, surrounded by the disorder, chaos and joy that is the cultural signature of this part of the world. The news of the day was that Yayoi Kusama died this week at 97.

By any external measure, she had won at life. Her work hung in the world’s great museums. Her exhibitions attracted enormous crowds. Her paintings sold for millions of dollars.

What is less well known is that for nearly half a century, she voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital. Her life was deeply imperfect. She didn’t resolve her internal struggles before producing her art. She created while living with her struggles.

So much of our lives are organized around a promise that is false: someday, once we get things right, then we can start. Then we can be happy.

I think about my own state of mind in late 2011 and early 2012, right around the time of the “rant.” I have never been more unhappy than I was during that time. It was a bizarre contrast between apparent markers of external success and an increasing sense of internal anxiety and disgust.

The specifics are not so relevant, whether it’s one of the world’s most famous artists who feels the need to voluntarily live in a psychiatric hospital, my own experiences, or yours. Whatever our desires, the lie is the same: that more money, more power, enough security, enough recognition, justice for the world, a fair deal—some future outcome—is necessary before we can start to live.

I’m sure there is no finished version of life waiting for us. I’ve seen billionaires tortured with worry about what other people thought of them. CEOs desperate for approval. Politicians who had acquired extraordinary power consumed with keeping it at all costs. People who had more money than they could possibly spend consumed by getting more.

The finish line keeps moving.

The temptation is to believe this is a problem particular to the rich and powerful.

I don’t think it is. They simply provide an unusually clear demonstration of something that all of us do. The joy of a morning coffee on an Italian island out of the movie Mamma Mia, surrounded by openly flirtatious Neapolitan men giving flowers to every girl who walks by, or the belly laugh of the old ladies as the neighboring puppy tried to lick their faces, struck a powerful contrast.

We imagine life on the other side of the next outcome. When I have enough money. When I get the job. When I lose the weight. When my candidate wins. When our country becomes fair. When our relationship is right. When we finally resolve whatever it is inside ourselves that makes us uncomfortable.

Only then, I’ll be okay.

Kusama’s life offers a different possibility.

She didn’t wait until the struggle disappeared before creating something meaningful.

She made something beautiful from inside an imperfect life.

Maybe that’s what all of us are doing.