Yesterday I found the nubby blue almost-scarf that I started knitting in March 2007. Last month’s selection for book club sits on my nightstand, a bookmark sticking out somewhere near the middle. Half of a poem, scribbled on the back of an obsolete to-do list, fell out of my purse over the weekend. It will slip out again in a few weeks and nudge me to close the loop on the musings that prompted me to jot it down in the first place—I probably won’t.
I’m OK with unfinished. That sounds blasphemous as I say it, seditious somehow. My Puritan ancestors with their much-touted work ethic must spin in their graves at my confession. Thanks to them, we live in a culture consumed by a model of success that focuses almost exclusively on end results. Unfinished things represent sloth or weakness or failure. “Produce,” our forebears whisper from the dust. So we do, without examining the product.
The mentality reminds me of the Play-Doh Fun Factory that held my interest for about fifteen minutes on Christmas morning the year that I begged Santa for it. I crammed the Factory full of the artificially-colored substance provided and pushed the handle as hard as I could. Voila! A uniform and utterly useless rope of Play-Doh extruded reluctantly from the other end. Period. That was it—a finished product that was neither meaningful nor beautiful. Sound familiar? How often do we cram our days full of whatever society tells us matters and squeeze as hard as we can, strangling the life out of life, determined to finish what we start? Is it any wonder when the outcomes are neither meaningful nor beautiful to us?
“Life is too short. You can’t do it all.” my parents often told me. As a teenager I knew better, naturally. “Hah!” I secretly thought. “Maybe you can’t do it all. Watch and learn, folks.” It took a few melt-downs and miseries before I would acknowledge that every book was not worth finishing and that all deep thoughts did not require the symmetry of verse. I realized that I can’t do it all. Now, I don’t even want to.
I will never finish knitting that blue scarf, but I’m not ready to throw it away either. It reminds me, like a snapshot, of Joan. She sat in her hospital bed with me beside her and patiently taught me to cast on and knit and purl. The business of guiding my awkward hands distracted her from pain and the fear of dying. My knitting was never about the scarf, not even a little bit. Joan talked as we worked the yarn—talked about things she loved. We laughed together and we wept openly. Eventually Joan came to peace. For a month the scarf took shape, but it never mattered. The process mattered.
Process matters to me. I exist to become, not merely to produce. Choosing what to begin is no small trick. Recognizing what is worth finishing is even more difficult. When I find myself pushing hard toward an outcome that holds nothing for my spirit, I allow myself to lay it down. In the end I suspect that the things we have abandoned along the path will explain much of what we have become. I’m OK with unfinished. Just consider me a work in progress.
22 Responses to “Unfinished”
Originally posted on The Peanut Gallery Speaks
http://www.peanutgalleryspeaks.com/2010/10/unfinished/
as for not doing it all, i think we have to learn that repeatedly.
Interesting definitions from a socialogical and business context. Thanks, Craig.
To make me what I ought to be
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be
‘Cause He’s still workin’ on me
Don’t judge him yet, there’s an unfinished part
But I’ll be better just according to His plan
Fashioned by the Master’s loving hands