the problem with perfection.

it was a dark and stormy night. ok it actually wasn't at all but i always wanted to start a story like that. one recent lovely summer evening i sat down to put my truck up for sale again. and people wanted it again. safe to say folks were hot for it again. only in the morning i changed my mind again. i thought maybe i'm just restless and needing a change although i resist change. maybe i want another camper although i don't actually go anywhere. everything's pretty much perfect the way it is. and that's the problem.

i thought maybe i'll renovate only i don't need to. then i thought hey maybe i'll find a girlfriend but really why(?) ok that one was scary so i revisited the camper idea. i answered an ad for an old camper and drove out to beckwith to see the thing. it was all wrong and i knew it was all wrong before i even went and yet i drove all the way. so then as i toodled on home i thought eureka i got it! i'm gonna finally sell the house and move to my cottage. i'd been thinking about it for long enough. and as soon as i got home i began packing two huge suitcases, wrote up an ad, posted it on-line and drove to the lake. it was a final firm decision that i felt ferfectly fine about.

then at about nine-thirty at night while sitting on the thread-bare cottage sofa listening to a cbc program about old people divorcing i noticed a friggin mouse crawling around the kitchen. i watched it sniffing the loaf of bread the bowl of fruit and all around. and it kinda dawned on me that i actually don't wanna watch a friggin mouse sniffing my bread and my fruit and all around. so i packed back up and drove home and unpacked and cancelled the ad for my house. i wrote an ad to sell the cottage instead. it was midnight and had been a tremendously full-on wonderful day.

you gotta understand that my house is virtually the first place i've lived on either side of the world in which i do not have rodents sniffing my fruit so to speak. and while it's not a big issue and easy to deal with, that's not the point. the point is there's an innate problem with perfection. like when everything is in fact perfect and yet one remains ridiculously restless desirous and desperately dissatisfied one has to really recognize that the solution to the problem of perfection must finally be found within.

aristotle allegedly wrote: "i count a person braver who overcomes desires than one who conquers enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."