Beautiful process, beautiful product. This is the motto I’ve come to choose for my life – in work, in creativity, at home, in friendships. But I have a confession to make: it is a motto that I must struggle and strain to live out. I have come to this motto over years of playing a leading role in various industries all intended to create beauty – interior design, floral design and music most specifically. All of these industries are intended to bring joy to their audience and to improve the quality of our lives. For at least two of them, the goal is also to create a greater relational connectedness as a result of the work that is created. And yet far too often I have experienced a great deal of ugliness behind the scenes of these industries on the road to creating this intended beauty.

I am a recovering idealist, I will admit. But recovering, not currently living as one. I know far too well that getting to something beautiful can require a great deal of mess. Renovations are the perfect example. In order to get to that beautiful finished product, there is a whole lot of destruction and dust and chaos and mess that will come before it. But that doesn’t mean that this process must be ugly. The process can still be beautiful, even when it’s messy. Ugly and messy are two different things. It is how we engage throughout and what we perceive to be the goal that truly makes the difference. Careful planning and a goal of making each step meaningful…well, that changes everything.

I think there are few better analogies for this than real friendship. Real friendship is messy. It’s about crying together when life is hard, laughing together when there is a reason to laugh, sharing in each other’s joys and even having the courage to challenge each other when we need it. It’s about listening a whole lot. It’s about endless cups of tea and walks and talks and follow up texts and phone calls. It is about caring even when it’s inconvenient. It is about process.

Without this process, I will never get to the beautiful “product” of being known and loved {and I never would have experienced this}. Without a meaningful, kind and thoughtful process on a design job, the beautiful product at the end of it will feel dissatisfying as I recover from what it took to get there. Without a beautiful process of making music, it will just be noise. Sure, the audience might never know it. But I will. And that matters to me.

We don’t always get to choose what makes the process beautiful. In highly collaborative, creative industries, there are always, ALWAYS challenges thrown our way. Interior design will teach you to EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED. Things do go wrong. But I believe it’s how I respond that makes the process either ugly or beautiful.

I am a work in progress. I do not manage to respond well all of the time. I no doubt contribute to an ugly process more often than I’d like simply by being human. But I am striving for something better, and I thought I’d invite you along on that journey. I am striving for a messy, chaotic, inconvenient, dusty, challenging and beautiful process. And just like a renovation, I’d really prefer to work with a team to get there. I never have been one for swinging a hammer alone, and as my clients will attest, it would take us all a LONG time to get there if I had to do all the work myself.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! What are your tips for creating a beautiful process – in design, in music and in life?

xo
s.