More work on editing the True Voyage Is Return Podcast this week. Editing is fun, but tricky. There is a constant stream of choices and decisions to make, each of which could send the narrative spinning in a different direction. It’s easy to start second guessing yourself as you agonise over the tiniest of cuts and EQ curves. I’m constantly having to keep my perfectionist tendencies in check.

Episode 5 of the podcast is all about poet Romalyn Ante. Amongst many other ideas and approaches to work, she talks about the Japanese philosophy that helps to keep her own perfectionism under control:

“In Japanese — my husband is half Japanese — there’s this philosophy called Kodawari [1]. It basically means ‘work in pursuit of perfection, while knowing that perfection cannot be attained, and you can never get it’.

So they use, everybody, well, he said everybody in Japan uses it. Not just artists, even the sushi maker, right? The way they design their food and the way they mould the rice. They’re always in pursuit of perfection, knowing that they can never be perfect.

And when I heard that, I thought, that should be my philosophy, because that just means continuous professional development and comparing yourself to your own self, knowing that you’ll never be as golden as you think you could be, right? So there’s a sense of pushing myself quite hard, while being humble enough to know that I can never be this great poet.”

I find the idea of Kodawari immensely comforting. It’s about forgoing comparisons to other people or seeking external validation. Rather, it’s about making your work accountable only to your own personal standards and where you are on your developmental journey. Herein lies self-respect and dignity.