Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:
God alone can finish.
— John Ruskin
We may have been brought up with the idea that we always had to finish something once begun – a meal, a painting, a task, a project, a letter. In many cases this went along with our notions of perfectionism: if something is going to be done, it must be done perfectly — the way Dad does it or the teacher or God. And so, especially if we liked to experiment a bit or dream, we felt we really didn’t measure up.
But many of the greatest artists — Leonardo, Cézanne, Picasso — left work unfinished, as if to show the margin between impossible perfection and their own striving. What mattered was the effort and the process and the struggle. Each viewer of an unfinished picture could, by responding to the work’s creative urging with her his imagination, fulfill the process.
Our lives are never finished — at least until we can no longer add any final touches. We are always in a process of change and becoming. That is why we keep taking the Steps in our program over and over — to remind us that our lives are journeys, always in the act of unfolding.
I feel relaxed when I view my life as an ongoing creative process rather than as a perfect work of art.
Hazelden Foundation
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