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.