Author: Bev

I personally think it was no mistake that Scrooge included the word, “bug” in his snarl about the seasonal generosity that so annoyed him in the beginning of Charles Dickens’, “A Christmas Carol.”  Because, what are bugs if not annoying?  “Humbug.”

I learned from a television documentary that insects are two-thirds of the species on the planet.  Google confirms it as 40% of all known living species or ten to thirty million species of insects inhabiting the planet.  Holy-moly, she exclaimed.

It was in the seventeenth century that the word “bug,” began to be used to describe insects.  Bugs, then were specifically the bed bug, which quietly fed on people at night.  Bugs, as night-time terrors originated with the 1535 Bible known as the “Bug Bible” in which Psalm 91:5 read, “Thou shall not need to be afrayed for eny bugges by night.”  The word, bug, was replaced by the word terror, in later Bible translations.

Bug season has commenced in these parts and I’m not a fan.  Bugs like to bite me.  There must be some sort of invisible extraterrestrial-type of beacon on the surface of my skin that screams to those millions of bug species’, “come and get it, here!”

At least honeybees have the courtesy to die after they’ve stung you.  Not so much the mosquito or spider.  They just keep feasting until they’re made dead by some such person as me.

Carpenter bees just hum you to distraction when they can’t get through impenetrable aluminum gutters or vinyl covered soffits, etc.   Tell me you haven’t witnessed a bug-driven simpleton, like me, swatting at Carpenter bees with a tennis or badminton racket?  But insects are persistent little “buggers.”  I think maybe that’s a bad word in Britain.

Gnats seem to fancy my eyes and I’ve had them try to fly up my nose.  And they also seem to relish making a fool out of humans who walk outdoors especially in the woods, or around ponds, lakes, or swampy places.  We jump and twitch and perform hilarious antics with our arms to recirculate them away from our faces and upper bodies.

Don’t you feel sorry for cows and horses when it’s bug season?  They cope with these creatures that bug them so incessantly, by flailing their nice long tails about and blinking those big, lovely eyes.

An entomologist is an insect specialist.  A similar word, etymologist, is one who studies words, their origins, history and evolution.  So, I see the former as a defender of all things bug and the latter is me, curious about all things connected with the word, bug.

You’ve heard the saying, “put a bug in your ear,” referring to someone planting a suggestion into your mind, that you can’t shake off?  But I’m wondering, have you ever had a bug in your ear?  It’s life altering, not in a good way.

In mechanical engineering, a bug has been identified as a glitch in the system since the early nineteenth century.  A literal bug, a moth, was stuck on an electromechanical computer prototype in 1946 and ever since then, a glitch in your computer system is called a bug.

I’m familiar with spies or detectives bugging folks’ cars or houses, or offices, because I watch a lot of mysteries and crime dramas on television.  How dare they bug your secrets?  What buggers!  There I go, using bad words again; at least it’s not four-letters.

Has something been bugging you?  If you’re in a snipey mood and criticize something or someone, there’s always somebody like my husband, or myself on certain occasions, who defends them and it really bugs you because you’re already in that mood.  Annoying.

This made me wonder if anybody really likes bugs.  I figure Entomologists have to like them a little, since it’s their life-work to engage with them, deeply.  But when they get bitten, tasted for lunch, or stung and swelled up….

I figured, like with everything else, someone would be a defender of bugs if someone such as me criticizes them.  Defense attorneys are always considered dastardly in cop shows.  Someone is always “PO’d” after all.

Bugs just keep at it, don’t they?  They won’t let you be, be, get it, bee?  How loud must I say it for you to get a pun?

I will play defense attorney for the honeybee, because of course they are honeybees.  My husband raises them and has been stung hundreds of times and he usually just brushes them off and moves on.  I have been stung probably a half dozen times and as usual, I react much differently – much like my poison ivy reaction – badly!

There are probably defenders amongst us of the yellow jacket, the wasp, the gnat, ants, carpenter bees and even the spider and mosquito.

It’s buggy outside, and I don’t mean there’s a parade of Amish or Mennonites in town, or a troop of babies going for a ride down the sidewalk or in the park.  An image of myself as a youngster popped into my head.  I pushed doll babies around in an ancient blue and yellow stroller or pram, known as a baby buggy, back when.   I also had a blue wicker baby doll buggy that has been hushed into a corner in our attic.

Don’t judge me if you see me wearing long sleeves and long pants this summer.  It’s because of bugs.  And if you hear this human walking around muttering, “humbug,” you’ll know that I’m probably dealing with some swollen, itchy, mass, someplace on my body and I’m having a hard time getting rid of it.  And it’s bugging me!

Did your mom or grandma darn socks, like mine did?  Nothing was worn out or thrown out until it was beyond repair, or could not be repurposed.

I remember mom using a wooden device that looked like a lemon juicer but without the pointy-end, to darn socks. I imagine it was called something like a “darning-egg?”  Since I’m not that into gadgets or devices, I just stuff my hand up into the sock to identify the tear, and that gets the job done.

“Worn out” is a relative term.  To some folks, for example, a sock might be worn out at the first sign of a hole, usually in the toe, the ball of the foot, or the heel.

The very thought of “darning” a sock is way too old school for a generation where frugality and “darning,” “mending,” or preserving a garment of any sort is not the …de rigueur of the day.  Throw it out when it’s worn out, end of story.

I find myself probably squeezed in between the “throw it out” school and the “sew every rip” school in the college of life.  The line that I cross, is determined by the question, is this a favorite garment?

For example, my husband can be seen around our property wearing a “favorite” red t-shirt which has a distinct hole in the back.  He even gets a suntan at that very spot on his back, every summer.  I say every summer, because he is allowed by his spouse to keep wearing said worn-out t-shirt, year after year.

Get this, I even use my favorite stain remover, Shout, on extraneous stains on that shirt and all of his other “work-shirts,” even though there are paint stains on it from five years ago when he painted the house.  I know, some of you are out there judging me right now.  I don’t care, have at it.  Like I said, there is a line I won’t cross and I won’t have my husband out in our yard working with a salad dressing stain on his work-shirt.

I confess, I have sown underwear.  Eek, did I say that?  They were favorites and I just couldn’t part with them yet.  My dad’s pillow cases, handed down, also get sown, tear after tear.

One rainy afternoon I darned a pair of ridiculously expensive socks that I bought with “rewards points,” from a credit card.  I’m sort of a sucker for good socks.  These were the best winter socks I have ever owned; soft, warm, and comfortable.  In fact, I bought two pairs and wore them nearly continuously around the house and on hikes last winter.

These were quite simply too valuable to me to be thrown out because of a hole, well, to be honest, multiple holes.  But I’m not totally crazy about sewing, darning and revitalizing worn out clothing.  I throw out my husband’s torn socks and many-a-t-shirt has been recycled into the “rag bag.”

But, lately, I’m on a cleaning jag and that means discarding some stuff that hasn’t been used in, well, forever.  My new problem is, the “rag bag,” which has burgeoned into several bags with different categories such as tablecloths, blankets, rags such as those aforementioned old, soft, cotton t-shirts which make the best stainless steel polishing cloths ever, old dish towels, large plastic bags and wrapping from new appliances or tools, plastic tablecloths which work almost like tarps – you get the picture?

So, is anything ever really worn out?  Some folks can repair anything.  Creative minds repurpose all manner of stuff, heretofore destined for the landfill.  And, my husband is a true believer in duct tape as the life-extender of many a pair of work-boots, just sayin’.

And what about the kind of worn out which describes the human being, depleted of energy or enthusiasm?  In one of my favorite movies, The Tailor of Gloucester, the Tailor describes his state as “worn to a frazzle.”  That just about describes the truly worn-out garment as well as the worn-out person after working too hard.

When is hard work too hard?  Make no mistake, mental work can be as exhausting as physical work, and some days….

Between us, my husband and I hail from German, English and French Huguenot ancestry and we do not lack the hard work gene.  But some days, I ask myself, “why does everything have to be so hard?”

Physical hard work might wear a fella out, but sweating and aching muscles, sore joints and the inevitable, cuts, scrapes, and so on, result in a certain kind of satisfaction and reward in a job well-done.  But, the hard work of battling bureaucracy, call centers, “help-lines,” and so on, support the theory that mental hard work can wear a person out to the point of exasperation, or to a “frazzle.”

You’ve heard the expression, “you can’t fix stupid.”  And, some bureaucrats and “telephone support personnel” force you to join their circus, when you really have no inclination to swing on a trapeze today.  Yet, here we are, and they’re wearing me out, beyond repair.

 

 

Half-done or incomplete tasks make me feel jittery at best.  If I’m honest, unfinished business makes me ill-at-ease and a tad grumpy.  I guess it messes with my peace of mind.

Giving up your peace.  Now that’s an interesting concept.  I once heard of something called a “peace- threshold,” which is the level of pain or discomfort at which you yield your peace of mind, to your circumstances.

Many of us will tap-dance just up to the plate of that threshold and retreat into stubborn possession of our peace.  We fall back onto our default, “I won’t give up,” attitude that keeps us in play and we refuse to yield to negative circumstances.

I know some people whose peace is achieved amidst an environment that would throw mine into a tailspin.  I wonder about how this state of peace is attained on different levels in different people.

Some people are totally okay with projects left “up in the air.”  Uncertainty totally unsettles some of us; others take it more as a matter of course.  I confess that I am one of the ones who gets tetchy when a certain undetermined amount of time passes with things unfinished.

I have a very small stack of papers on my desk, next to the telephone.  I’ll have to deal with them at some point as they are, in essence, my perennial to-do list.  This is what I call needling stuff, kept on the back burner.

The back burner is where we simmer stuff that isn’t the main course.  Needling stuff jabs me occasionally, reminding me that it’s still there and hasn’t been dealt with yet, but isn’t so time-sensitive that it needs dealt with now.

I think there is something to peaceniks’ interpretation of reality.  For example, there are thousands of potentially fulfilling experiences wrapped up in the process of things.  But some of us, living tenuously in peace, fixate on what we want to achieve and cease to capture the joy in our moments.

“Don’t make it happen, let it happen.”  This was the gist of a recent dream of mine.  My takeaway is to let the future come to meet me and treasure the past for what it was.

My great-nephew, who is in his late twenties forwarded this Facebook post recently: “I’m an adult which means I don’t have any hobbies; if I have any free time at all I will go lie down.”  He’s my kind of young man.

Do you have time to spare?  Can anyone really have extra time?  Remember the guy in the Bible (Hezekiah) to whom God actually gave some extra time, fifteen more years to be exact?  As I recall he blew it, got into trouble and it wasn’t a blessing after all.

There’s only so much time in a day.  Have we all been assigned a certain amount of time on earth?  If so, how can one have time to spare?

Someone has surely said to you at some point in your life, “give it some time.”  Often this is when you’re suffering some sort of loss, insult, or injury from which you are in one or another stage of recovery or acceptance.

We live in an instant culture with infinite promise.  So, it’s no wonder that waiting for anything is an excruciating endeavor for most of us.

Time is a demanding taskmaster.  It seems to be biting at our heels, reminding us in a tyrannical way, to keep moving, or else.  Or else, what?  Might we be too late?

So, we try to get things done at the last minute or….

“By the skin of my teeth” – Check out the Biblical book of Job, ch.19/vs.20, where Job describes his plight as just barely holding on, with the only part of his body escaping affliction, his gums.

“At the nick of time” – In the 1580s, if you were “in the nick,” you were at “the critical moment” …or it’s too late.

“Eleventh hour,” described in Matthew 20:9, was when a few last-minute workers, hired long after the others, were paid the same wage. Despite being brought on the job after eleven hours of hard vineyard work, they weren’t too late.

“Zero hour” originated in 1945 at the capitulation of the Nazi government at midnight May 8th. It is also a military designation, meaning the scheduled time for the start of some event, or operation.

“Under the wire” or “down to the wire” is from late 19^th century horse-racing, when a small wire was strung across the track, above the finish line, to help the judges determine which horse crossed the finish line first.

“High time” originated in the 13^th century and it refers to the warmest time in the day. Since people of that era were mostly farmers, this time marked the turning point in the day when you must have either gotten so much work done on the land or you begin doing so immediately.

“Ship has sailed” comes from the mid-19th century. · It refers to the era when ships were largely powered by wind and you have arrived too late to catch it.

As to any of your unfinished business, what do you say we just follow the rule of Larry the Cable Guy, and “get er done.” If anybody dare ask you “when,” just answer, “in due time,” and hold onto your peace.

 

 

 

“It’s up to you.”  “Do whatever you want.”  And, the sometimes, fatalistic, “whatever.”  Has someone said something of this kind to you, indicating that you are free to decide on any course of action you wish to take in a given situation?

I grew up using the male pronoun (his, him, man – as in mankind, etc.), accepting it as universal.  Women at the dawn of “women’s lib,” I grew up in its heyday, did not take offense at the language usage of the day.

In this case I’m referring to “to each his own.”  So, with today’s sensitivity to all things, gender, I adapt the old idiom, to today’s title, “to each their own.”

Some folks attribute this saying to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own-self be true.”  Others go back further to Roman author and politician, Cicero’s “suum_cuique,” “To each his own,” but Cicero’s connotation was not what we know of the idiom, today.

This all started with a friend who commented on a puzzle I had completed and shared because it was an artwork I admire and thought it was beautiful.  She said something to the effect of “that would drive me crazy, but it’s pretty.”

You see, the “to each their own,” phrase applies to the concept of what works for me, suits me, rocks my socks, floats my boat, makes me happy, tickles my fancy, bakes my cake, flips my pancake, turns me on, or rings my bell, and yet doesn’t do any of that for you, or you, or you.  And that’s okay.

A few years ago, I commented about the overarching fragrance of Russian Olive tree blossoms as I walked a wooded path in the late Spring.  I phrased it something like, “this must be what the fragrance of God is; mesmerizing.”  A friend commented that “it surely is not, to those of us with violent allergies.”

At the time, it didn’t occur to me that anyone wouldn’t appreciate what was to me an almost supernaturally amazing and joyful fragrance.  I don’t have perfume sensitivities and my allergies are limited to being stuffed up, sneezing, and a nuisance reaction, nothing clinical or limiting as to my joy of appreciating the outdoors, or our cats, for that matter.

My friend’s comment reminded me that my experience is not the same as hers or yours, perhaps.  It might be similar in some ways, and we feel like siblings from a different family, or it might be vastly different, or somewhere in between.

Because we might be the same gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, from a similar geographic background, educated similarly, go to the same church or don’t go to church, doesn’t mean we have the same ideas, values, thoughts, ideologies or moral code.  Or, it might be as simple as we don’t like the same things, or perceive things identically.

Abortion is in the news, big time since the Supreme Court “leak.”  For many people, this is not a personal issue, but a social one.  I’m far too old for it to be personal to me, but it wasn’t personal to me back in the day either, in that I didn’t want an abortion, or need to struggle with the decision.  However, I knew and cared for plenty of people to whom it was very personal.

I’m a fan of the PBS show, “Call the Midwife.”  This show’s content is all about British midwives and nuns caring for their birthing community – pregnancy and birth; abortion and miscarriage; heartache and triumph, ten fingers and ten toes, and the fear and disappointment when there is some unusual variation of these, starting in the late 1950s, into the late 1960s.

Several episodes have depicted the lengths women and families had gone, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, when abortion was not legal and the birth control pill was in its infancy.  Marital rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and intimidation were barely dealt with yet in the legal system.  I personally wouldn’t go back there, for anything.

I wouldn’t want to walk in anybody else’s shoes, other than my own.  “Different strokes for different folks,” comes to mind.  This saying originated in a 1966 interview with boxer, Muhammad Ali, as he described his boxing style in the ring.

Do you have a different style of relating to different people?  I think, long-married people definitely have a shorthand when communicating.  We talk differently to business associates than we do to acquaintances, family, and friends.

I think the different strokes which we apply to different folks is a social mechanism of respect directed toward others who have their own individual thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of right and wrong, good and bad. 

Would that we could apply the principles of, “Live and let live,” “Que sera, sera,” and the proverbial, “To each their own,” every day, all day, and to all people.  All ya all are wonderful, just the way you are, whether you’re my cup of tea or not. “I’m okay, you’re okay.”

Jazz great, Miles Davis, once said, “When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.” This man knew a little bit about improvisation.

My very rudimentary explanation of improvisation is, “flexibility in selecting ‘the next note’ in a tune.”  The next note is not predetermined.

I’ve personally experienced the next note as both predetermined and fixed, and flexible and creative.  I very much prefer the latter.

The improvised next note is up in the air and therefore potentially scary but it’s also the epitome of freedom.  The 1992 En Vogue tune, “Free your mind, and the rest will follow,” comes to mind.

I played clarinet, badly, in high school band.  This was the predetermined note kind of music.  When you play the wrong note in this type of music, the next note, already laid out for you, sticks out, exposing your failure in screwing up the note, previous.

As a young adult I sang in our church choir.  Dot Smith, our wonderful director, gave me liberty to harmonize.  I’ve never felt so free than when my voice could soar in unscheduled, unplanned, Spirit-led, improvisational harmonies with one note followed by the next unknown one, or string of them.

Dance has been the same in my experience.  I have been known to mess up in a dance routine, planned out way ahead and sort of memorized.  But I also had the pleasure of dancing to the beat of the Spirit rising up from within, and what a difference that license to improvise makes in your soul.

Are you free to choose your next note?  Or is it predetermined?

We should all have a license to bend.  Remember “Gumby?”  It was a rubber toy that was flexible and we could bend it into any number of positions.  It’s fun, relaxing, and liberating to model something or nothing with clay or play-doh.  It’s kid-like freedom, to improvise, or bend.

Are you “Gumby” or “set in your ways?”  You can change your next note.  Be fearless and improvise.  Nobody can say that you didn’t intend to make that note dissonant, just for the experience of it.

Unfortunately, life as we age might become more or less flexible, depending upon the notes which precede.  But the next note is up to you.

Our joints become less flexible as we grow older, but a lot can be said for “use it or lose it.”  It might take us a minute to muster our flexibility.  Transitioning from sitting to standing then walking, jogging or running takes more time than it used to but we can do it.

Or, as the joke goes, “at our age, you have to make a plan ahead of time on how you’re going to get up, when you sit on the floor.”  I can identify with our aging cat, at sixteen, when he really contemplates his getting up and lying down movements.

A loved-one with advanced cancer did the same, he took “forever” to get in and out of the car.  Myself, I have begged my daughter’s indulgence when we embark on shopping trips, “remember It takes me a minute to transition from sitting in the car or at a restaurant, to walking; it’s a way of reminding me how old I am.”  She doesn’t mind, because once I’ve regained my flexibility, I speed walk, out of habit.

I’ve observed other folks of a certain age, when I’m out and about.  We have a distinct way of moving that belies that we’ve been ambulating about the planet for a relatively long time.  I would describe our walk as concerted effort, with determination.

Do you have a flexible mind-set?  Wow, it depends on the day, doesn’t it?  Sometimes, we’re bent almost to the breaking point, but then “Gumby” makes a comeback and we bounce back to our usual upright position.

Is the opposite of flexible, rigid?  I know the opposite of improvisation is certainty.

This reminds me that choosing either a fixed rate or a variable rate on a loan, depends on how much risk you’re willing to take with your finances.  Or, if you’re in it for the long term or short term.

Well, I’m in it for the long term.  I’ve hit a few wrong notes in my day, but I’m still determined to improvise the next notes in my life and see where they take me.  How about you?

Maybe your household is among the folks who keep an orderly, up-to-date and sensible collection of foods in your refrigerated storage container.  Apparently, we are not, until I made these observations.  And now, I’m just embarrassed.

There are soy sauce and sweet-n-sour packets, oh and hot mustard, from that take away Chinese food from five years ago.  Speaking of packets, in case we run out of ketchup in the bottle, we kept only about fifty, eight-year-old ketchup packets from fast food places; not counting the twenty-five or so that reside in the car.  Better safe than sorry when it comes to enough ketchup.

We have some hardened mystery-nut-butter that “they” were sure we’d like when they gave it to us at the turn of the millennium.  I didn’t have the heart to throw away a gift.

Pumpkin flavored whipped cream seemed like a great idea at Thanksgiving.  We consumed approximately five dollops of it at Thanksgiving, and it’s May.  Surely, it’s still good.

We kept a miniature bottle of lemon-flavored Perrier, the fancy fizzy water that must feel too fancy to drink when we can drink the store-brand seltzer water in the can.  I guess we’re keeping it for a “special occasion,” whenever that may be.  Somehow, in our household, “special occasions” must not be special enough to merit consuming such items as that bottle of Perrier that has been kept for over a decade, I think.

Twelve raisins in a baggie…. I don’t know, you tell me.

There’s pickled something or other in a jar.  It was a gift and throwing it out just seems ungrateful.

Tucked in one of the door pockets is a jar of some kind of fish paste that has Asian characters on it.  It was also a gift; what were they thinking?  One of my culinary rules is, never make home-made Chinese; leave that one to the professionals.

What was I thinking when I shoved, into the netherworld of the garage-freezer, that leftover pureed canned pumpkin and its partner, gob-filling?  Maybe the justification was that I’d wake up one day and think, “I’m gonna bake three pumpkin gobs today, boy am I glad I kept that pumpkin and filling.”

I still have whole grains, mystery flours, and all manner of seeds that I thought of using in massive quantities, but used a few cups, to make several loaves of artisan breads.  This was maybe twenty years ago when we bought a wonderful bread machine that I now break out of the back of the cupboard once a year to make Finnish cardamom bread and before the low- carb diet that changed my life in 2003.

There’s a pretty designer bottle of homemade Horchata (Mexican rice milk), that I made in order to try a cocktail which I didn’t particularly like.  It still smells really good and looks so pretty in that bottle.  Speaking of pretty, we have some iced cider in a darling gift tin.

Oh, and there are choices of bottled salad dressings, all my husband’s, which stay permanently housed on the bottom shelf of the door.  I’m an olive oil and red wine vinegar gal, myself.

There are maybe two tablespoons in each, Catalina, why? Blue cheese, why? And two different kinds of ranch in bottles, several unopened packets of the really good kind of ranch; several packets of creamy Italian which came with subs; oh, and a dozen packets of mayonnaise which hubby can use if we run out of the good olive oil mayonnaise that we keep on hand.

Also stuffed in the door pockets is: A1 sauce for steaks which we just aren’t fans of, Cajun sauce for seafood which I bought for something a dozen years ago, Hickory seasoning for the salmon dip I make at Christmas time; Turkey broth in a packet which came with the turkey drumsticks which I tried last Christmas; Killer hot sauce which will remain, since we love any and all hot sauce as well as the two miniature bottles of real maple syrup alongside the corn syrup we call, pancake syrup for when hubby makes waffles, quarterly, at best.

Disclaimer, if you were the giver of any one of those food gifts that I mentioned in this column, do not take offense.  In this household we believe in the adage, “it’s the thought that counts.”  So, your gift was received with gratitude and your intent, banked.

Don’t worry, we’ve had a massive clean-out and ensconced a fresh, open box of baking soda to absorb that mystery odor from all of those enigmatic foods, long buried in our refrigerated storage box.  Cheers. – let’s have Perrier!

I broke a fingernail. My “perfect” fingernails walked seamlessly into the realm of reality the day before Easter.  It happened incognito.  The middle one, you know the one, appeared maimed to its jagged edge, which you could barely call an edge since it was emaciated right to the quick.

Unusual for my modus operandi, I said, “oh well,” tidied it up and moved on.  There was a time, back in the land of perfectionism, that I would have been compelled to cut all of my nails very short to accommodate that one broken one.

Wouldn’t it be appalling if someone should notice this lack of order, consistency, balance or perfection in me, right?  If they notice at all, does anybody really care, beyond “oh, you broke a nail?”

Atelophobia, the fear of imperfection, is probably a somewhat self-conscious fear, thinking that people notice you more than they actually do.  Sadly, most people are more concerned about themselves than they are about you

I wonder if all perfectionism is in some sense trying, without success, to accommodate brokenness because we can’t maintain perfection indefinitely?  After all, one definition of perfect, is “excellent, beyond practical.”

Is it enough to maintain a perfect façade?  The house might be crumbling inside, but if the outside looks good, all is well.  Or so it seems.

Expectation, accommodation and adaptation to reality might be the real circle of life, as it turns out.  If I’m honest, I didn’t really expect my nails to all stay one length, looking perfect, for long.  Experience tells a more realistic story.

I don’t know what day it was but one day something clicked in me and I decidedly preferred peace over perfection.  I became a utilitarian after having been an idealist for eons.

I was a teenage idealist.  It seems that sometime along the line, I lowered my standards of excellence.  “Lower your standards,” someone shouted.  “For shame!”

Whoa, hold on a minute.  Who set those standards to begin with?  Me thinks it was me, when I was an idealist.  I’ve since, relinquished my mental perfection-detection meter and re-defined certain minor flaws as a variation of normal.

For a Sociology course I taught, I studied utopian communities of the 19^th century.  Do you have, or your family had, Oneida silverware, an Amana refrigerator or freezer, or a Shaker cabinet or ladder-back chair?  All three of these renowned crafts are products from utopian communities.  They were idealists who no longer remain as living, contemporary communities.

Idealists lose steam because the reality is that any philosophy which demands perfection and rejects anything less, will fail the test of time.  People are flawed.  No one can conform absolutely to the highest degree of excellence, consistently and forever.

Excellence has degrees.  You’ve heard the increments: good, better, best.  It has been said that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”  Or, as Voltaire said, “The best is the enemy of the good.”  Confucius said, “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”

The drive toward perfection can be a good thing because it may just result in a great thing.  But the dark side of the pursuit of perfection is the persistent attitude that says, “if it’s not perfect, it’s not right.”  This translates to, “I’m not right, or good enough.”

Enough is a parallel concept of perfection.  When is good, good enough?

Can you stop on the road to perfection and say, that’s good enough?  Can you stop the car, at good?  Can you conclude, “I’m good?”

When is enough, enough?  Ancient Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu (Laozi) says, “There is no greater sin than desire, no greater curse than discontent, no greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.  Therefore, he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”

Someone once said perfectionism is a waste of time since twenty percent of your effort gleans eighty percent of your desired result.  Does eighty percent  work for you?