Nothing in life is perfect, but it’s the “needs improvement” that will drive you nuts!

In the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, God and Adam reach out to each other, but they are not able to touch. So it is the same with perfection. Anyone, going that route is making a mistake which will lead to the non-productive “woulda coulda shoulda” second guessing game.

The great philosopher, Johnny Depp figured it out. “If you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second.”

In days of yore, the university study of Psychology was under the umbrella of Philosophy. It was not considered a science. When I attended the University of Michigan (1954-1958) I minored in both subjects, but neither of them were included in the required science courses;
Astronomy, Biology, Zoology or Geology. Not wanting to dissect a frog, or tackle the statistics involved with Astronomy I chose Geology—“A science that deals with the history of the earth and its life, especially as recorded in rocks.” I like history and I like pretty rocks, so how bad could that be, especially for a person who thinks live frogs are kind of cute?

Other than a field trip to a very dirty gravel pit, I managed the first semester rather well, not very well, but almost pretty well.  However, the pit was my downfall. We were supposed to find fossils in the little rocks.  All I found was gravel. The second semester was a bitter learning experience. I discovered that I did not have the mental ability to read topographical maps. Heck! I didn’t have the ability to read a campus map. That campus was bigger than my home town. I hired a tutor to help me survive that second semester, and it took a tearful appeal to the professor to convince him that I had passed the class.  As a high achiever, it was the first and only “D” (or was it “D-“) that I had ever earned in my academic experience. Life does bring its ebbs and flows, and this was the pits!

Now, with the woulda coulda shoulda game, perhaps I should have chosen Zoology. I did take a semester of non-lab Zoology and did very well. But, on the other hand, that “D” did not really affect my life, and my decision did save one little frog from the chopping block.

Over the years,I have learned not to second guess myself, and to accept that I am not perfect. As a writer I learned that rejection is part of the profession. For example, in 1889 the San Francisco Examiner sent this rejection to Rudyard Kipling: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English Language.” If Kipling could take it, so could I!  Also, I learned that for every one person who would encourage me there were ten more who were waiting to gleefully knock me down, but sometimes life is just like that!  For instance, someone was always waiting to pan William Shakespeare’s plays: “A Midsummer Nights Dream,” performed in London in 1662 brought this review: “A most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.” (Samuel Pepys Diary). And, The Odessa Courier wrote about Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi in 1877, “Sentimental Rubbish. Show me one page that contains an idea.”

No one is perfect—not even me!  That hurts, but I also have learned that 60 seconds of  anger serves no purpose except to lose 60 seconds of happiness, and life is just to damn short. Hindsight is not wisdom and second guessing past decisions is rather a masochistic exercise, unless you are into mental whips and chains. Things change all the time and they will never be the same, so it’s a good idea to do the best you can, keep things in perspective, and remember getting aggravated, and second guessing  the football game you watched yesterday, won’t change a thing.

Esther Blumenfeld