Houses Are Like People
Houses are like people. I have never met a perfect one. There are some that are truly grand and others are simply grandiose. Mostly, I have been charmed by the sheer variety. Large, small, quirky, original, I almost always find something to enjoy and appreciate. Some have made me so uncomfortable I’ve had to walk away. And there have been a few I fell in love with. But not one of them has been perfect.
As an Interior Designer I have had to wrestle with this idea of perfection. When I started, my clients and I labored under the false belief that if I were a “good enough” designer and if they were willing to spend enough time, interest and money, together we could create the perfect house. Through a mixture of frustration, litigation, rumination (thankfully before my professional ruination) I determined that “perfection” is a foolhardy aspiration for any endeavor that requires human in-put. After a few years of owning my Interior Design Firm in Washington DC I totally gave up on the possibility of perfection.
In my career I have watched this striving toward perfection. I learned it is a fantasy point no one can ever reach. There is always something more, something better, something newer. The myth of perfection paralyzes projects and it paralyzes people.
I determined the perfectionists were people who didn’t really know what they wanted or who they were. But, I didn’t see this in myself or in my personal obsession with making everything in my house “just right.”
I spent three years gutting and renovating my house. To everyone else my house was wonderful. For me it was a constant source of disappointment and frustration. It was never quite right. When something needed repair, I took it as a personal insult. I focused on every imperfection. I started having dreams that the foundation was rotting away and the pipes were exploding.
In retrospect I know I was ignoring the problems in my marriage and life. It was easier to project them onto my house. One Saturday afternoon my colon ruptured and I nearly died. I woke up in the hospital and spent the next three months in bed. My house survived. My marriage, and the life I had known, did not.
During those months I started thinking that the real renovation project needed to be my life. With the blackest humor I said to myself, “Why the hell not? You’ve already been gutted.”
I liked the idea that my life was stripped down to the studs of my existence. It made metaphysical sense to me as a designer. I would start at the foundation and figure out what needed to be strengthened; which walls needed to be shored up, and which needed to be torn down. I would rethink all the interior space that is my core and create an open plan that allowed for who I was and who I wanted to become.
The interplay of house and life is a powerful metaphor for me.
I encourage you to really look at your home and your life. See the things that work well. If there is something you want to improve, decide if it’s worth the energy and resources to change and commit to doing it. Otherwise let it go. Most of all appreciate what you have now.
Houses are like people. They reflect back what we give and who we are.
