Brenden Matthews

As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve been learning to embrace a radical idea: it’s better to do a bad job of something than to do nothing at all. The wisdom is everywhere—you miss every shot you don’t take, perfect is the enemy of good, done is better than perfect—but living it is another matter entirely.

I’ve always been wrapped up in the idea of my own identity. Lately, though, I’m trying to let that go. Identity is a curious thing. It’s tricky to define, yet most of us carry some concept of who we are, some internal story we tell ourselves. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who’d spent time at an ashram in India. He went there to meditate, to simply be, perhaps to do nothing at all.

As a child of the internet age, I have barely known a world without it. Although I grew up in a transitional time—computers were commonplace but the internet itself was far from ubiquitous in my childhood—I still find it difficult to imagine life without instant access to the boundless information, entertainment, and superficial connection we all get from the internet.

I, like most people, have a great appreciation for beauty in all its forms. When we see something beautiful, it can trigger an emotional response that transcends mere recognition—be it a sunset painting the sky in impossible colors, a face that catches our eye in a crowd, a landscape that makes us pause mid-stride, or a painting that captures that ineffable quality of light. We’re naturally drawn to beauty, which begs the question: is it beautiful because we are drawn to it, or are we drawn to it because it’s beautiful?

At the yoga studio, many people come and go. Often, you encounter newcomers who treat their first yoga class like a HIIT workout. They rush through transitions, sometimes literally jumping between poses (āsanas). In their minds, yoga seems less like a deliberate flow and more like a race to the finish line. They might substitute five rapid pushups for a single, controlled chaturanga (often missing the pose’s subtleties), and fly through their upward-facing dog without syncing movement to breath.