We’ve been in La Paz for just over two weeks, although it feels like longer. And it’s definitely enough time for us to stumble on our first insight of our leap year:

We’ve been paying WAY too much for dog grooming.

No, that’s not actually it. But Holly did get a good grooming today that only cost 200 pesos, which is about $15-16 USD depending on the exchange rate. And the guy did a GREAT job and took much less time than other places we’ve gone in the U.S.

No, the actual insight is this: We’ve been oriented to believe that anything less than perfect is unacceptable, but maybe everything doesn’t have to be perfect all the time in order to have value. Ugh, it sounds too obvious right?

This building is right across the street from us. There’s a clean, flat sidewalk with no holes, tidy potted plants, immaculate white paint, and a charming rustic exterior.

But when you zoom out, here’s what everything else looks like:

Clearly things now look imperfect: power lines everywhere, rebar sticking out next door in case they want to build another part in the future, electricity meter in plain view, unfinished facade at the top, weeds growing in the sidewalk.

Last night, we went to an art lecture where it took them a good minute or two of switching on and off every single light in the place 10 minutes into the lecture to figure out the right combination of lighting.

I thought, if this was my event, I would be shitting a brick right now. a) I would be staring daggers into the person messing with the lights and giving them hand signals to stop, b) we would have figured out the correct lighting before the event started, and c) I’d start worrying that someone in the audience was epileptic and that the accidental strobe-light effect was just what they needed to be pushed over the edge.

You already know what I’m going to say: That building functions just fine as a retail space and is two doors down from an awesome bread bakery, and everyone forgot the lighting snafu after five seconds and learned a lot.

There are pros and cons to the pursuit or non-pursuit of perfection, but the latter is considerably better for our spirits.

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