Perfectionism rarely creates perfection. You procrastinate because you’re terrified of falling short. You abandon projects because they don’t live up to insurmountable standards. You spend more time frantically burying flaws than creating something authentic.
We think we want things, but every desire points to a way of life, a kind of person we long to become. Objects seduce us not with their utility but with their promise of transcendence—status, attention, belonging.
I’d like to imagine a space where time is treated like we are gardens rather than machines - where time is attuned to our individual needs and given consistently, given softly, given with care.
Ritual prevents the ordinary from dissolving into invisibility. If you light a candle at dinner, the meal becomes an event. If you walk at the same time each day, it becomes more than exercise. Anthropologists will tell you that rituals function as technologies of attention: certain ordinary acts aren’t trivial, they’re the architecture of meaning.