Imperfectly Perfect: Lessons from the Leaning Tower of Pisa

In the garbage, I see beau­ty. In beau­ti­ful things, I see the garbage. 
One can­not exist with­out the other. 

~lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er, lin­guist, ontol­o­gist, and archae­ol­o­gist Barbara Ann Kipfer

Construction of the Tower of Pisa began in 1173. The 58m-high bell tow­er, or cam­panile, took almost 200 years to build, and was already alarm­ing­ly lean­ing to one side when it was unveiled in 1372. The tow­er, made of heavy lime­stone and lime mor­tar, was built on dense clay, which was not a very sta­ble place to build a 14,500-ton tow­er. The foun­da­tion start­ed to sink into the soil on one end, ulti­mate­ly caus­ing the entire struc­ture to list almost 5 degrees to the side.

Throughout the mid­dle ages, it was con­sid­ered an enor­mous fail­ure by both the coun­try and the Church. Since it was built as an exten­sion of the town’s cathe­dral, it was seen as an affront to God. 

And yet, it’s now one of the most vis­it­ed sites in all of Italy and boasts more than 5 mil­lion vis­i­tors each year. That so-called “affront to God” cur­rent­ly pours more than 20 mil­lion euros into the local econ­o­my each year. I have been there twice, and long to return. I spent an entire after­noon on the great lawn before it, my head cocked like a gold­en retriev­er, a smile on my face. I drank aper­ol spritzes and burned my fin­gers on street panze­rot­ti. I was mes­mer­ized by the bell tow­er, couldn’t look away. 

Success is con­tex­tu­al. Our cul­ture is so focused on per­fec­tion we often over­look the ben­e­fits of fail­ure. Failing well spurs cre­ativ­i­ty and cul­ti­vates resilience, two char­ac­ter­is­tics of a well-lived life. Sometimes it’s the imper­fec­tions that make some­thing real­ly stand out. Like karaōke that’s so off-key it’s charm­ing. A well-placed freck­le that adds inter­est to an oth­er­wise flaw­less com­ple­tion. Our favorite sleep shirts, with every hole and stain a sto­ry. Or a real­ly old bell tow­er that cants adorably to one side. 

Perfect just isn’t inter­est­ing. Our atten­tion is drawn to things that stand out, not things that fit in. I have a Navajo rug that has a mis­take in it, a ran­dom red square dis­tort­ing the pat­tern of black cir­cles. Then I learned that many Navajo arti­sans inten­tion­al­ly add these “mis­takes” to high­light the imper­fec­tion of human­i­ty. Either way, this rug is far more inter­est­ing than some­thing mass-pro­duced to per­fec­tion in a factory. 

Perfection isn’t nat­ur­al either. Without genet­ic imper­fec­tions, there would be no evo­lu­tion of any life form and all prog­e­ny would be iden­ti­cal to their ances­tors. Humans have a very poor­ly designed skele­ton. Our spines are much bet­ter adapt­ed to walk­ing on four legs than on two, but our insa­tiable curios­i­ty about what might be over there cre­at­ed the neces­si­ty to stand. Our ani­mal ances­tors did strug­gle with bad backs, fall­en arch­es, and painful live births, but they must have felt it a small price to pay for see­ing far­ther afield. Our cra­ni­ums are far too large to sit well atop the ver­te­brae, yet we cer­tain­ly wouldn’t trade it for the small­er, less neu­ral­ly con­nect­ed brains of our ancient ancestors.

Perfect is lim­it­ing, because where do you go from there? Those peo­ple to whom every­thing is easy? They nev­er learn the dogged­ness that comes from fail­ing and try­ing again. Their lives are less full for not know­ing wabi-sabi.

I sus­pect that true per­fec­tion doesn’t exist. It’s a lie we’ve been encul­tured to believe, but takes a lot of pho­to edit­ing to keep the lie going. And if it does exist, it’s ephemer­al, a dynam­ic and ever-chang­ing event.

Because per­fec­tion and beau­ty are two dif­fer­ent things. Beauty is relat­able and authen­tic, while per­fec­tion is some unat­tain­able ide­al, Sisyphus rolling his boul­der back up that hill. So build your tow­ers, write your books, bake your cakes, tell your sto­ry, wear the bikini. 

Strive for beau­ty instead of per­fec­tion. Hopefully what you leave behind will live in infamy.