Whenever I can, I have knitting needles or a crochet hook in my hands. I love crocheting and knitting, and although I have been doing both for a long time now, I am very slow at both crafts. This fact does not stop me from loving the feeling of the different yarn textures in my hands, the smoothness of some, the coarseness of others. My speed is also not an impediment to loving the process, from the moment I see a beautiful yarn, followed by the selection of a pattern, then trying to follow the pattern (and often being constitutionally unable to do so), and seeing the project unfold.
I also love reading about the benefits of knitting and crocheting, articles that tell me how these crafts lower my blood pressure and how they are a source of meditation. While these articles validate my passion (what I mean by that is that they enable my obsession), they help me avoid some behaviors that have negative consequences when I engage in them: first, they stop me from opening my mouth and sharing my opinions in ways that are not helpful, and second, they stop me from eating junk while watching tv or attending my child’s sports events.
Like every other fiber artist, I have a stash. For those of you who are not a part of the fiber community, a stash is an amount of material waiting to be used, usually an amount exponentially bigger than one’s capacity to use unless one lives 3 lifetimes. After all, the one who dies with most yarn, wins. And we all have too many accessories. There are needles and hooks of various sizes and formats, cable needles, different implements to count rows, to weave in ends, and different kinds of stitch markers. Just as it is true for yarn, the one who dies with more accessories also wins. One of my favorite accessories is a little box in which I store stitch markers, with a sentence printed on it that struck me as spot on for how I am perceiving life right now. The sentence is: “Living the VIP life”. The letters VIP are crossed, and above them it is written WIP.
VIP are the initials of Very Important Person, a celebrity, someone who has achieved a measure of excellence in sports or the arts, and are celebrated for that. WIP stands for Works In Progress. I am not sure that every fiber artist is this way, but I have at least three projects going on at the same time. These are works in progress that usually stay around my living room, waiting for me to decide if that is the project I will choose to work on today. I usually have a mindless knitting project, an intricate crochet project, a quick finishing small project, and a more complex knitting project. I think about the difference between living the VIP life and the WIP life.
Living the VIP life must be exhausting! It must be hard to be in the public eye at all times, exposed to relentless and minute criticism, always holding oneself to a level of perfection that can withstand the scrutiny of millions of people who have an opinion about everything the VIP does or does not do. On the other hand, VIPs have certain privileges that most of us do not have, and receive some perks that are fun to have.
In contrast to that, the WIP life is the one most of us live. The Work In Progress life is the life that reflects the many projects to which we must tend. It is the life where one accepts that there are no finishing lines in everyday life. We have joys and obligations that stem from our different roles, as parents, as children, as professionals, as enthusiasts, as members of our society, and as individuals who deserve self-care. Obligations constantly change, as we navigate our many challenges. There are times in which our focus is on the role of professional, others that require our focus as parents, there are moments when our role as children receives the majority of our attention, and times when our obligations to our community and to our society are front and center.
To be human is to balance all of our different roles and be good enough at them. Living the WIP life is recognizing that we do not need to be a VIP in every part of our lives, remembering that VIPs are also not great at everything. They are great at one thing or another. The end result is that we all are living the WIP life. We are all works in progress. We all have to accept our imperfections and know that we are not going to excel at every role that we have. Every day brings a chance to do our personal tikkun, a course correction. Every day brings a chance to get better at something else, including getting better at accepting our own limitations. Being a work in progress and accepting our limitations is at the core of many teachings of our tradition. We learn in the Talmud, in Massechet Makkot 10a: “Rabbi [Yehuda HaNassi] said: Much Torah have I learned from my masters, more from my companions and from my students most of all!”
Rabbi Yehuda HaNassi recognized that he was a WIP, understanding that he was always learning. There are masters, companions and students at every step of our lives. WIPs make corrections as we learn that one course of action has the potential to work better than the one we had previously thought was best. WIPs recognize that we are not experts on every single thing, and that there are many chances to learn and to be productive if we just keep our eyes and ears open. And we are aware that learning comes from every single interaction in our lives. The way in which we learn from every interaction is explained in the Pirkei Avot, Chapter 4, Mishnah 1:
“Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? The one who learns from every person, as it is said: “From all who taught me have I gained understanding.” (Psalm 119:99)
I love this teaching by Ben Zoma! Works in progress have the potential of achieving wisdom, as long as we are open to learning from every person, allowing ourselves to change when needed, honing our points of view with the insight gained from people and situations around us. Learning from every person and situation does not mean that we follow blindly everything that we are told or are taught we must do.
My understanding of this passage in the Mishnah is informed by Ben Zoma’s choice of proof text. He chose to quote from Psalm 119, a Psalm that has 176 verses, whose message is the importance of learning God’s teaching, and not being deterred by enemies who are intent in leading the psalmist astray. Reading the quote in context, I understand that the choice of this verse as prooftext is quite profound. Ben Zoma teaches us that we learn not only from our teachers, friends, or students, as Rabbi Yehuda HaNassi taught. WIPs learn from everyone, from those that give us good examples, from the people who hurt us and from those who give us bad examples, as well as from our own reactions, discernment, and reflection. Ben Zoma knows that wisdom comes as we learn from what is taught by people we love and respect, from paying attention to our internal compass, as well as from the people that we don’t like or respect.
WIPs follow Ben Zoma’s teaching, sometimes learning from positive interactions, sometimes learning from negative interactions, and always allowing space for corrections and changes.
Let me share with you a recent example of a correction that I witnessed that changed everyone involved in it for the better.
I recently entered my first Mystery Knit Along. From time to time, a designer offers a challenge to crafters, giving a clue in different intervals of time, so people can improve their skills or learn new ones. This is my first one, created by a designer called Casapinka. She writes as if one of her cats, Sharon from Security, is the one writing the pattern. Sharon from Security has different adventures, always very funny and witty. For this pattern, Sharon from Security is chasing the people who robbed her car in the US Virgin Islands, and every week the new clue is named with a different term for bad people. For the second week, she named one of the pattern sections as “shyster.” A few days later, we received an update to her pattern, that said the following:
“I just updated the pattern because it was brought to my attention that “Shyster” is a Jewish slur and I had no idea and am so sorry. With all of the hate crimes against Jews going on in our country I definitely don’t want to perpetuate this. Just press “update” (probably a lot of you haven’t even downloaded the original yet) and you will get the copy with the Double Crossin Swindler Stitch!”
In other words, as a WIP, this designer had one of her mistakes pointed out to her, apologized for it, and then changed. She did a tikkun, a personal correction, a moment where she changed based in an experience. As she grew from this experience, all the hundreds of people following her had the chance of growing along with her.
There is another kind of handiwork that has an acronym. Crafters and artists almost always have UFOs, which stands for unfinished objects. These are different than WIPs. Works in Progress are projects that are being worked on, things that will eventually be finished. UFOs are the projects that have been forgotten for so long, there is no chance we will ever complete them. They stay, fossilized, in some part of our home until we move or are forced to move.
This is the main difference between WIPs and UFOs. One finishes WIPs, even if that takes us many months to do so. UFOs have a great probability of never being finished. Choosing to live the WIP life instead of being derailed by UFOs is at the center of a teaching by Rabbi Tarfon in the Pirkei Avot (2:21):
“You are not obligated to finish the task, neither are you free to desist from it.”
As a work in progress, I will continue to work on growing, learning, participating, and changing. It might be challenging to live the WIP life. It is also rewarding. Keeping our life as a work in progress, recognizing our limitations and making our personal tikkunim, correcting what will otherwise keep us stuck in place, is the antidote to being a UFO.
In this New Year, may you live the WIP life!
May we be blessed with opportunities to grow, change, develop, and create.
May we learn from all our interactions, both positive and negative, having the wisdom to discern between a lesson we should follow and a lesson that is a warning.
May our mistakes be pointed out to us gently, so we can do our tikkun, our corrections, learning from them, and accepting our limitations. May we continue on our road, filled with love and compassion, for ourselves, for others, for humanity and for our world.