THE IMPOSSIBLE chore of making sure that everything is perfect, including ourselves, makes us procrastinate about everything we do. Adding indecisiveness to our paralysis, we try to resolve unanswerable questions before we risk doing the wrong thing. “What is reasonable, fair, normal, and right?” we waste our time asking. Unrelenting ruminations and abstract worries keep us out of more active trouble and allow us the reassuring illusion that we are above the muddle of everyday irritations and disappointments, but still, we live our lives threatened and anxious about losing control.
The more we can learn to choose the free pleasure of a life that combines the seeming contradictions of self-discipline and self-indulgence, systematic thought and irrational feeling, reasonable caution and exciting adventure, the more manageable life becomes in reality. Accepting the eternal oppositions within ourselves is far more fun than soberly pursuing a life of controlled consistency.
We will all be fools at times. When we accept that, our imagination
opens to possibilities we were once too wise to consider.