A Perfect World

Someone told me the other day that this is not a perfect world. Gee, I already knew that! In fact, I’ve known it for a long time, at least a year or so. In the five decades prior to that I merely suspected it. What tipped me off? Well, it wasn’t any one big event, just the culmination of a lot of little events. That couch I paid $29.95 for on eBay never showed up. The birds at my feeder kicked out the bird seed and pooped on my deck chairs. The dog packed up my suitcase and took it with him when he moved in with the neighbours. Other hints: my iPod showed up in the dryer after boldly venturing into the washing machine. It was the first time I ever witnessed music committing suicide. Last Christmas I came down with a bad cold, just like the previous eleven out of the twelve Christmases. The only year I was spared the cold I had Norwalk virus instead. What a mercy it was to return to the simple rigors of a fever and a runny nose the following year.

I’ve also begun to notice that globally the world is a little less than perfect as craziness crests ever higher. When there are devastating wildfires in California or Australia, some people run for their matchboxes so they can get in on the act. The rest of us are left banging our heads on the Wall of Disbelief. While most people either strive to make the world a better place, or at least are feckless enough to avoid setting off the general ruination of the planet, there are a few who are so inexplicably malicious that we are left stunned with the jaw-dropping stupidity of their actions.

Why can’t we ever have perfection? To figure that one out, we would have to understand just what perfection is. Apparently, Aristotle was the first one who flopped down in his lawn chair and allowed this concept to wash up on the shores of his brain. When it was all over and the three barrels of wine had been rolled back into the cellar for refilling, he had decreed three rules. Perfection has to be complete – no parts can be missing. It has to be so good that nothing similar can be any better. Also, it needs to have some sort of goal in mind, and it needs to achieve that goal, like a hockey player with a vendetta lucky enough to have a crossed-eyed goalie on the opposing team. There can be no margin for missing that goal. Pretty heady stuff – can you imagine what Aristotle might have come up with if he had stopped after just one barrel of wine? Or if he’d sustained a puck to the head?

I tried to think of things that might fit with Aristotle’s three point plan for perfection. Shopping came pretty close, but fell down on the goal part. Often I buy the no-name brand when I can’t find the premium brand, or when the premium brand has a price so high that I require treatment for altitude sickness. Likewise, driving a car almost fit the bill, but when I applied the “nothing could be better” part I had to admit that my car was a Ferrari only in my mind. Regrettably, swimming in a lake on a hot summer day also fell by the wayside. While, for the most part, it satisfies all of Aristotle’s carefully constructed principles, I remembered that time I emerged from a swim with a blood-sucker the size of Lassie stuck to my leg. I’ve never felt the same about swimming since.

Then I thought about ice cream. Could it possess the potential for perfection? I began to apply Aristotle’s line of thought to find an answer. If you stick the ice cream in a cone, it is complete – no parts are missing. Can ice cream be said to be “so good that nothing of the kind could be better”? If you throw half a paycheck into this endeavor, that will most definitely be true. No point in getting the cheap stuff when you are seeking paradise. Does ice cream achieve its goal? This is a toughie, and you can see why Aristotle needed all those barrels of wine and a cozy lawn chair as assistive devices. It’s not something you can just decide in a moment or two. It must be tested. Ben and Jerry’s, Hagen-Dazs, homemade ice cream – all these depths must be repeatedly plumbed. Lumps of cookie dough must be deployed. Cherries must be Garcia-ed. Vanilla beans must be paraded down your palate, front and centre. Chocolate must be placed on the altar of your tongue and given its due diligence. It takes a lot of years and a lot of effort to make these important decisions about perfection. I’ve worn out more than one lawn chair in this exploration, possibly making me a larger authority than Aristotle in more ways than one. And when it was all said and done, when the multitudinous tubs of ice cream were swept away, and when the sugar fix wore off, and the bathroom scales loomed up into my consciousness, I would have to say that, unequivocally, ice cream fits all the criteria for perfection.

So while I admit that this isn’t a perfect world, there are those rare moments when it comes close enough not to matter. And in those moments, your fist is wrapped around a sticky cone, your forearm is awash with a river of ice cream, and bathroom weigh scales were never invented. That, my friend, is what you will find when you reach your Shangri-La or your Heaven – a big frosty ice cream cone. And it will have not one but two giant scoops waiting. Just for you.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest…

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" How many times have you dueled with that tired scrap of philosophy? I never really get as far as thinking about whether or not there was a “sound.” I tend to get caught up in the part about the tree falling in the forest. Now, I can’t be certain, but I am pretty sure that, like all other things that don’t quite turn out the way we wanted, it’s my fault. The point isn’t whether or not the event was noisy, it’s my role in it that counts. Somehow, a tree has fallen. No doubt, it happened because I forgot to wash, feed, clean, or mail in something. Somewhere a sapling is without its mother and I am to blame. A bird’s nest is crushed on the forest floor in a yolky mess, a squirrel is missing his nuts, and a whole lot of bark beetles are wandering around trying to decide what to do next. And I know that it can all be traced back to me.

How do I know this? Well, why would the tree be an exception? I am responsible for all the other things that have gone wrong in the world, so surely my influence encompasses unsuspecting trees. It’s a guilt complex served up with global tendencies.

The magnitude of my complex has crept over into megalomania. The war in the Middle East? I’m pretty sure it’s my fault. After all, haven’t I been sucking down all kinds of gasoline in my Honda Civic, driving as much as four miles a day, and mowing the lawn without regard to fuel consumption? And what about the current economic mess that is sucking the life out of our entire planet? Yep, probably did that one too. I’m not sure of the mechanism, but somehow I must have played a tiny unwitting role that set this calamity in motion. Probably it was that account I closed at the bank with the $23.95 in it. One day someone will identify it as the fiscal tipping point that started the ball rolling.

So, how I have come to place myself at the centre of these crucial events? I’m really not clear on the “how” of these situations, but my guilt meter relentlessly claws at me. A dog gets hit by a car in Africa. Yep. Also my fault. If I’d sent that twenty dollars to the Save the Canines Fund, the dog would have been happily sleeping in a dog house. It would have had food and water, three rubber toys, and a photo of me hanging on the wall. It would not have been wandering willy-nilly in the streets scouring for food. My fault, all my fault.

I admit that I might have let my sense of responsibility get out of control, but it all started with little things. Someone spilled a Coke on the rug. I failed to clean it properly and now the permanent bear-shaped stain is my fault. I have to live with that terrible knowledge. The toothpaste ran out. I was the last person in the house to set foot in a store. I completely let my family down by failing to buy toothpaste. It doesn’t matter that the store was Blockbuster Video. Just wad that up and add it to the bin labeled All My Fault. A bridge collapsed and three people were injured. Oh oh – I was a little tiny bit late with the municipal taxes in 2003. I should have thought about how that transgression could lead to a disaster. In another city. In another province. Mea culpa.

So, for whatever reason, I have begun churning down the Hill of Guilt, deeply embedded in a giant dirty snowball. Its diameter is ballooning with the stretch-marks of remorse, and I’m picking up a lot of debris and momentum as I cascade ever downward. And I almost hesitate to report this: that tree in the forest is firmly in my sights. And when I hit it, no one is going to care if it made a sound or not. But the unleashed blast of guilt is going to pepper the entire planet.