More Than Not Messing Up

Check for errors, but focus on delight.

Peter Kaufman imagines one dog talking to another: 

“Can you believe how easy it is to manipulate human beings and get them to do whatever you want them to do for you?... All you have to do is every single time they come home, you greet them at the door with the biggest unconditional show of attention that they’ve ever gotten in their whole life. And you only have to do it for like fifteen seconds, and then you can go back to doing whatever you were doing before and completely ignore them for the rest of the evening.”

If people (or animals) show that they care and make us feel special, we tend to overlook many imperfections. Moments of delight can forge connections lasting decades.

But if people (or animals) never touch our hearts, make us smile, or get us to laugh, we tend not to think about them much. 

Sometimes we can be so focused on checking the boxes and avoiding errors that we fail to cultivate a delightful surprise. Our interaction with others may be unobjectionable — and entirely forgettable.

It's helpful to avoid making too many mistakes, but no one loves a lack of mistakes. We want warmth and wisdom and wonder.