Perfect vs Good, and the parable of the dishwasher

A little while ago I came across the saying 'the perfect is the enemy of the good', and it really struck a chord with me.

I was thinking about this when I was talking to my therapist, Peter, one Thursday morning. I started seeing him about a year ago when, to my surprise, I found that everything was all getting a bit much, and I felt like my head was going to explode - the head-about-to-explode thing is a phrase I'd heard before but never imagined quite how accurate it is until it happened. This does, also, explain why this blog is called mid-life crisis.

Anyway, we were talking about my general disinclination to confront things, and I couldn't help trying to weasel out of it by saying that you have to pick your battles, some things aren't worth fighting for etc. I pulled out the 'perfect is the enemy of the good' thing and he thought it was pretty good. (He one day described me as 'fascinating', which coming from a therapist makes me a little uncomfortable.)

I had an ex who saw things in very black-and-terms. She was a complete absolutist - things were good or bad, and she knew straight away. I found something about this certainty bracing and exhilirating, but it meant our domestic life had all sorts of strange currents. I told Peter the parable of the dishwasher.

My ex, let's call her, well, 'X', had an idealised view of how the dishwasher should work. She wouldn't rinse plates or cooking vessels, and she'd leave them until they got nice and crusty. She'd then put them in the dishwasher as usual, then when they came out - invariably with bits of baked-on gunge still adhering - she was upset and disappointed. She'd then pick the bits off by hand, or scrub then off, saying that the dishwasher didn't work properly. (Towards the end I thought she was blaming me for this, but at that point we were reading the worst into everything. She wasn't. But I still cringe at the thought of how sorry - and guilty - I felt for the dishwasher.)

My approach was to compromise with the dishwasher. I'd rinse things in a timely fashion and try to work with what the dishwasher actually was rather than what it should be in some idealised world. She saw this as evidence of character weakness on my part, and would give me a look of blank incomprehension when I tried to change her ways. She was, of course, partly right. I am far too ready to compromise, but at least in this particular instance it was worth it: I got clean dishes and with minimum effort.