The Beauty of “Ball Parking” It
I’ve never really understood the phrase “ballpark it.” It comes from counting attendance in ballparks- and it means something like, “Give me a rough estimate.” I’ve never really understood this because ballparks know exactly how many people attend. In the old days they counted the number of tickets handed over. Now they just scan a barcode and computers do the math. Either way, we’re talking about fairly high levels of precision.
Setting aside my confusion for a second, I love this phrase. I love rough estimates. I love the idea of working hard enough to get a clear idea of what is going on in a given situation but not working so hard you send yourself into an anxiety spiral over minutiae.
I took an online course in photography recently from a photographer I admire. In one of the sections he showed some of his most famous portraits- and a few of them were quite out of focus. Now, anytime I take a picture that is out of focus I almost always send it straight to the trash. His philosophy was more like, “I try to get everything in focus. That’s the goal. But an out-of-focus picture can still be a good picture. So you have to ask yourself if it works even though that one element might off.”
I went and scrolled through his website. Most pictures were very neatly composed, sharp, and in-focus. There were a few here and there that were slightly out of focus and a few more that were completely out of focus. But they were still beautiful. Never for a second did I think, “Why is that featured on his website?” It was totally obvious why they were featured: They were beautiful even though they were not totally precise.
This was eye-opening for me- and for reasons that had very little to do with photography. According to this photographer’s way of seeing, he tried to get as close to perfection as possible, but, the proximity to perfection in and of itself does not determine beauty. What I mean is this: his completely out of focus pictures are just as beautiful (more so, in some cases) than those that are either a. technically perfect (and precise) or b. a lot closer to being technically perfect.
This is true in other artistic mediums as well. Picasso could paint photorealistic images if he wanted to- but his unique contribution, and what was truly beautiful, was his abstract work that looks, dare I say, like a child could do it.
Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, and Bob Dylan are all notoriously sloppy guitar players. The technical precision is not there. But they all created culture-shifting music that was, objectively, beautiful.
I wonder if this concept could be applied to faithful life. I don’t know about you, but I spent many years trying to figure out how to be a precise Christian. A technically perfect Christian. The kind that hit all the right notes, and never a wrong one, and in the proper order and at the correct time. Much of this was done out fear. What if I hit a wrong note? Won’t that ruin things?
Of course, that’s not the question we ask when it comes to our lives. We ask, “What if I’m not hearing God’s voice? What if I’m not following his call? What if the thing he wants me to do is the thing I absolutely do not want to do? What if I mess up my call? What if I’ve missed my call?” And so on and so on.
Like I said, I don’t know if you’re like me, but, if you are, you have been worried at times about this kind of technical precision and had some measure of fear about the consequences for missing the mark.
But what if missing the mark is beautiful in its own way? An out of focus picture has a rawness to it- an almost vulnerable quality that helps you feel as if that picture was taken in a real moment in time (as opposed to a technically perfect portrait taken in a studio where you get no such sense of time or place).
Bob Dylan’s early albums are earnest and sincere because he isn’t strictly controlling the tempo of his songs, and he occasionally makes a picking error, and because his voice doesn’t sound like it’s from the heavens. But they’re beautiful because they sound like a real, live person whose soul is tortured by the violence of this world. You wouldn’t get that with technical precision.
Perhaps your flaws and your missteps aren’t things that make you less lovable. Perhaps they put you more in touch with yourself, your friends, your family, your spirituality, and so on. Perhaps they helped shift you closer to the person you want to be. Perhaps, because of this, they’re beautiful.
With faith, technical precision isn’t the goal. We’re trying to get in the ball park. Does this mean we don’t try to improve? Of course not. I’m quite certain Picasso, Hendrix, Dylan, etc. all worked tirelessly on their craft. But they also knew that falling short of the goal wasn’t a problem. In fact, falling short was often more beautiful because it put all of us more in touch their humanity, and with our own.
I wonder if you could view your own journey the same way. What if the signs of your humanity aren’t problems- but, instead, are beautiful opportunities to connect.
What would this change for you?
