Sometimes the edit isn’t necessary.
Sometimes the desire to make it perfect makes it a little less so.
That’s a hard truth for people who create and edit across copy, photos or video.
It doesn’t suggest our work isn’t required. It’s about knowing whether our touch adds value or strips bits of it away in search of perfection.
Last week that became evident while taking in this lighthouse up close.
North Pier Lighthouse, Frankfort, Michigan
I’ve been coming to this same lakefront region for 36 years. And I find myself taking many of the same pictures year after year, including this lighthouse. Each time I am here if feels right… just the way it is. Some might call it stuck in time. Others might consider it timeless. Neither is wrong — or more right.
Walk the concrete walkway 200-plus yards to reach the lighthouse and it reveals something different up close, details you don’t notice from the shoreline. It's easy to forget this structure was made to take a beating from the elements.
The colors are muted and fading. There are significant rust spots. There are hand-scribed notes. Taken together, these are the things that make it, well, perfect in its own way.
I spent time reading the marks and doodles, and the takeaway was simple: people want to be seen, want to say “I was here” as witness to this century-old structure, this view, and more often than not, offer a declaration of love. Nothing vulgar or political.
Isn’t that what a lighthouse does best — weathering all that is thrown at it while helping us navigate our imperfectness perfectly?
Imperfections become more visible up close
Experiential design
There is a campaign underway to restore the lighthouse, and I’ll take at face value that it is necessary.
But in its inevitable future restoration, it will attempt to become some human version of perfect. Perhaps "perfect is the enemy of good enough" means something in this context.
Through that attempt, it’ll likely lose a lot of what people love about it right now and over the years. How some wear and patina, some scuffs and scribbles make it more like a mirror to our lives – still standing and delivering on purpose, regardless of the imperfections you see up close.
A lesson worth heeding before returning to the work and reassessing what ideal might actually look like – before editing it away for the sake of scrubbed perfection.
Sometimes things need fixing.
Sometimes we feel compelled to fix to our own desire, which can hollow out meaning for others.
The real work is knowing the difference between the two.
“You’re Loved” between the rungs