Artists have high standards for themselves. It is in their mastery of art that they refine their methods. Nevertheless, artists around the world are prone to the perils of perfectionism. It is no wonder they are often cautious with their art, yet still unsatisfied with the details they call mistakes. This essay paints new light upon such so-called mistakes and reveals the depth perfectionism lacks.
A mistake is a human-made label denoting that a thing, often deemed unpleasant, that occured by chance should not have become. Intentional mistakes technically do not count as mistakes due to their intentionality, so I will not speak of them in this essay. Mistakes are random, so whatever one creates is bound to have some amount of them. Human existence, for instance, is a mistake: as a species, humans did not emerge from an intentional plan. Nature as a whole unfolds by chance—by mistake. Alternate possibilities are only possibilities; what has happened has simply happened, no more, no less.
Understanding this element of pure chance, I would discourage colouring mistakes as unpleasant. They are one of the many things that distinguish a piece of art from another. Every human being is a mistake, in that the form that a human being is was not intentional. Indeed, if one's birth parents are brown-haired, it is likely that one will also be brown-haired. But that is a mere likelihood, not a guarantee. Such is nature: nothing is a guarantee other than change in space and time. Furthermore, every human being has mistakes—unintentional features, in the past or present, deemed unpleasant—but it is the choice of one to decide whether such features are unpleasant to themself. One is allowed to feel however they do about mistakes, but they must recognise their perspective as a subjective opinion, not an objective truth. Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Within an artist is an ideal concept. Naturally, the chance of it occurring precisely, as the artist imagines, with each detail, is only one chance out of near-infinite. Everything that has yet to emerge has an equal chance in so, only that some things are more likely to occur. Do note that it is only more likely, not a promise. There are no "should"s or "should-not"s in nature, no ideal human. Things simply are. The ideal world is a human-made concept developed through patterns and preferences. It is centered around possibilities, not guarantees nor the present moment. If one desires a guarantee, it is this: their piece of art had, has and will have mistakes. Ensuring absolutely no mistakes hinders one's performance, for that one will be concerned with possibilities instead of their present artpiece.
If life were perfect, and each event unfolded precisely as one wishes or expects, joy would morph to dullness in predictability. Things would no longer entice us; it is just as expected.
One can learn from mistakes, indeed, but one can also accept the wonderful imperfection of the universe.
Mistakes do not exist, we create them by labelling.