Perfect vs. Good

 

From Adam Bager's post The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
 

Perfect is the enemy of good.

- Voltaire

Perfect is the enemy of done.

- Catherine Carrigan

Perfect vs. Good

Scant on wherewithal, experience, knowledge and wisdom. Rich in dreams and hope. Foolish youth embarked into a sun yet on the rise.

We sailed off the charts and beaten paths, beyond the lights and markers. Back ways through reef and slough. Up nameless rivers. Between scattered towns.

*****

It all began with a set of chisels…

They've arrived!!

We’d have flipped for it, but Anke loves opening packages, so she always wins.

A cut here, a snip there. Some eager shucking of wrapper, and a well-made cardboard box was revealed to our greedy eyes. We could smell the cherry blossoms brushed over an industrial green background. They framed a spare script writen in bold, black strokes and arranged in vertical columns.

Kanji… Japanese.

Flushed with anticipation, we canted the lid slowly back on its paper hinge, with each a hand on one corner to share this moment of discovery. 

There! Lying in eight parallel compartments, each aglow with a rainbow sheen of oil. There they lay. Our beautiful set of temple builders’ chisels lying side by side.

Their lemony, heart centered, box-wood handles were steel ringed and socketed. We could see the darker line of steel edge we knew to be hardened, bonded to a laminate of polished metal visible as a sinuous line across the just-so bevel .

Trembling, Anke reached out her hand to lift one, turning it over to expose the underside hollows… Hollows! …that had been ground into their lower face. An ancient method, we had read, to reduce friction while paring.

These chisels were no ordinary tools. They were fit to build homes for the gods! 

Nor were they cheap. For us, they represented a significant investment in our future afloat. As sailors and masters of our own vessels, we would see to their needs as they would see to ours. 

BRAMBLE, a clinker-built British life-boat, was our first home together. She had been converted to a sailing cruiser sometime in the dim past. We had bought her as-is, hoping to learn, through her, initial sailing and boatwright skills. A strategic stepping stone on the way to a proper yacht.

She was in need of serious work. Now we had serious tools. 

Reverently, we took up the chisel appropriate to the task. A gentle, forward pressure and a feather of larch curled upward and back upon itself. Devoid of effort, this magical tool glided forth to do its work. 

Straight and true and clean and — TINK. 

Hmm… that sounded like we hit something. It sure felt like we hit something. And… a gnat-sized chip now marred our previously perfect edge!

We glared accusingly into the cut and a tiny, metallic glint sneered back. It was the jaundiced yellow of a coppery wire strand, souvenir of some long-ago brushing.

Many hours with a stone (finest waterstone, of course) elapsed. Many timorous taps with the special mallet backed the hollows away from the edge, proportional to the material we’d removed. The edge was restored!

Well. To spare you agonizing repetition, our very next efforts met with the same INSUFFERABLE results.

We traded our beautiful chisels to an overjoyed boatwright (who dealt in new construction with only the highest grades of wood) for a plain set of framing chisels. Cheap, robust and easy to maintain the edge.

*****

In hindsight this trade was our first entrance into 'the real world' where perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's not bad in itself, but more like a guideline, really.

Perfect is elusive, fragile and an end-in-itself. Good is at-hand, rough-and-ready and gits 'er did.

It's a choice.