The beauty in the imperfect

I've always been drawn more to the things in life that are messy, imperfect, and evolving than the things that are pretty and neat and finished and tied up in a bow. I'll take the messed up globby chocolate chip cookies over the picture-perfect ones, the song sung with grit and emotion over one sung technically perfectly, a dance that comes from the heart rather than one where all the positions are perfect but it doesn't sing; and I like people who are becoming something, ambitious, working towards being better tomorrow than they are today, always growing from their mistakes, rather than ones who consider themselves complete and finished just as they are

Which is why I like my drawing of Ulysses S. Grant like this more than in its finished form. He never finished evolving. He was always growing, always learning from his mistakes, always using his failures to become better.

Do something today to become stronger, better, more full. Work out, call a friend, push yourself, learn something, take a stand, take a risk, jump, fall... and stand up again.

But never be complacent.