I love listening to the radio while I am cooking, cleaning, eating, driving …… but today, listening to “Fresh Air” with Terri Gross, I had to stop, sit down and REALLY listen. Barbara Streisand, talking about her life and career. Captivating in its entirety, there was something she said early on in the interview that made it personal. Talking about her newest album, entitled, “Release Me” of previously unreleased material.  “I’ve had these things for a long, long time — a collection of these unreleased songs — These were songs that I did basically in very few takes, a lot of them one take, because we ran out of time by the end of a session. … (in the old days I did my albums in )  basically three days.  We didn’t have any way to fix things, and there were flaws in some of these things, but I thought, ‘Let’s put this out. —- it’s OK to expose whatever flaws I might have thought were there. I kind of enjoy things now that I don’t think are perfect.”

Imperfect.

Of course, we don’t want to put sloppy work out there. But there is beauty in letting go enough to set our little boat free, to grace the waters of the world, to bring pleasure or value to others. Don’t hold back because you or your work isn’t “Perfect”. We’re not Barbra Streisand. Of course not. But you do have gifts to give. Go ahead, give them, flaws and all. The world will be listening.