I recently finished reading a very thought-provoking book, “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin.  Rubin decided that she would take a year to both study happiness and attempt specific projects with the intention of raising her own happiness level.  She read scads of articles, books, biographies and essays on the subject.  She chose an area of focus for each month and set specific resolutions relating to that area, marking her progress (or lack thereof) on a chart each day.  These areas included such things as marriage, parenting, work, play, and physical well-being.  Resolutions were as varied as “stop nagging” to “sing in the morning”, “get more sleep” to “make 3 new friends”.  The book is liberally sprinkled with inspiring quotes from all her reading.

I’m on my second reading of the book now, this time taking notes.  I don’t know that I’ll undertake a Happiness Project per se, but there are a lot of resolutions that I’ve thought of that I’m sure would make me happier – and make the household atmosphere more pleasant.  Incidentally, I love her distinction between a “goal” and a “resolution”.   A goal is finite and achievable; once you’ve attained it, you move on to the next one.  A resolution is something to be worked on-going, whose point isn’t necessarily achieving perfection in it, but that in striving for it, we are better off than if we were not trying at all.

One of the quotes that has hit me most strongly is one by Voltaire:  “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”  How often it seems that we know the ‘perfect’ we should do, but because we can’t or simply won’t do THAT, we don’t even do the ‘good’ that we could.

As in inveterate reader of health articles, not to mention many a conversation with my doctor and lectures from various fitness nuts in my life, I know very well that I am supposed to be getting at least thirty minutes a day of aerobic exercise, plus doing at least thirty minutes of weight training three times a week.  “You’ll feel SO much better” and “once you get into it, you’ll miss doing it if you miss a day” and yadda yadda.  The simple fact is, I hate exercise.  Period.  I do!  So the reality is that I am never going to do the perfect of exercise.  But if I can make myself do ANY kind of exercise regularly, even just 10 minutes every day of dancing in the living room, it’s better than doing nothing.  Better to at least do the good, than give up entirely just because I’m not going to do the perfect.

Many years ago, I got into hand-making cards.  I bought a bunch of rubber stamps, inks, powders, stencils – all kinds of supplies.  For several years I got a lot of enjoyment out of making cards for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special days.  (I’d always been pretty big on remembering occasions with cards, so this was a change in the “how”, but not the “what”.)  But after a few years, I found that I just didn’t have the time to do the cards like I had been doing.  Oh, I still liked the idea of doing them, but I fell out of the practice.  But I felt guilty for going back to sending store-bought cards rather than sending homemade ones.  (Oh, the silly perspectives we sometimes take.)  So what did I do?  Yep.  I just pretty much stopped sending cards altogether!   Which do I really think folks would have cared more about:  that they got A card at all – or that they got a hand-made one vs. a store-bought?

I haven’t done as many posts this week as I intended because…. guess?  I started about 4 long drafts, each with a magnificent theme, but in each case, the thesis ended up splintering and wandering off in multiple directions like kids on a field trip – and I could never get them all back into the van.  So, when I realized my Magnum Octupuses were going nowhere, did I try to come up with something much shorter, but cogent, so that I would at least be posting something?  No.  I posted NOTHING.   I let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

There are so many areas of life where we can apply this maxim.  Housekeeping?  I can’t keep the house spotless, so I give up and don’t even try to keep it picked up.  Dieting?  I can’t give up all sugar, so I may as well eat the whole candy bar.  Parenting?  I can’t go to Disneyland, so I won’t even bother going to the park.  Keeping in touch?  I “owe” someone a long letter, but have time for only a short email, so I send nothing because I can’t send the long one.   The perfect putting the kibosh on the good.  Voltaire nailed this one!

Well… this post isn’t perfect.  It might not even be good!  But at least it’s DONE!