"Good enough" — conceptual millstone or simple equanimity?

© 2019 Peter Free

 

31 December 2019

 

 

I've been wrestling with the "good enough" question (again)

 

You know, the query which — answered the wrong way — means that you have settled for a millstone, rather than for equanimity.

 

These days, I often cannot distinguish the two.

 

 

Keep or buy?

 

I have been driving my wife's former vehicle for five years. It's a 2010 Subaru Outback.

 

The irony is that I had not wanted her to buy it in the first place. The car has mushy, Americanized handling.

 

Subaru engineered this slop into it, when the manufacturer went from making reasonably good-handling small station wagons to this comparatively giant model aimed at the American market.

 

Ironically, five years after buying the Outback, my wife opted for (what she called) a less "frumpy" Volvo.

 

She gave the Subaru to me. It replaced the full sized American pickup truck that I had had to sell, when the military sent us to Germany.

 

Today, 5.5 years after the formal hand-me-down ceremony, the car's sloppy handling still irritates me. Every time I drive it.

 

 

"Sell it, ya whiner!"

 

This is where the "good enough" issue enters.

 

Mushy or not, the Outback is pretty capable. It reliably goes from A to B in all but the most awful weather. And one can carry a fair amount of smaller sized stuff. Not by truck standards, of course. But still, most sensible people would think that it is a pretty good compromise.

 

Even I do, on most days.

 

It is the days when the car is not big or strong enough that get me to thinking.

 

 

But then, I have to confront the actualities of changing to something else

 

Reality has a way of crushing our dreams. At least so, with regard to these minor issues.

 

Today's pickup trucks are too big, too expensive and generally too plush to be a reasonable choice for someone with frugal underpinnings.

 

And even if I still were on the farm (that I came from), these 21st century pickup trucks would be too high off the ground for the kind of labor that I once did and still (occasionally) do.

 

Scratch a newish, expensive pickup from the list of possibility.

 

 

Then I have to confront . . .

 

. . . the mess that the used car market poses.

 

In contrast to the old days, modern America's pre-owned market is overpriced by world standards.

 

Auto mechanic Scotty Kilmer talked about that on his YouTube channel. What he said seems true. It was much easier to pick up a reliable used car in Germany (and the United Kingdom) at a reasonable price, than it is over here.

 

Add the hassle of finding an American owner who was not a maintenance slob, and you have an argument against replacing my perfectly good Outback with someone else's (likely hidden) atrocity.

 

 

You see? — I sink myself with common sense

 

That is my point. The "good enough = millstone" equation.

 

Why relieve oneself of something that conforms to the 80-20 rule — in this case meaning that it does at least 80 percent of what I need it to do — with something else that almost certainly will do no better across the spectrum?

 

 

Memory also has its intruding say

 

Pertinent to the above subject, when I was young, I worked at a ski area.

 

In good weather, one could drive to it in about 50 minutes. In bad weather, it could take two hours or more.

 

During my first summer there, I didn't have a car. I would walk a couple of miles to the mountain highway that headed toward the ski area and hitch a ride there. Sometimes, I had to catch two or three rides.

 

Given that I had to be at the up-the-mountain highway no later than 0430 in the morning, I was always anxious. Few travelers were out that early.

 

Fortunately, during my second or third week of hitch-hiking, a blue 1958 VW beetle picked me up.

 

Its three occupants (from Mexico) were working at the same ski place. The rest of the summer, they kindly gave me a ride each morning.

 

Their car's engine was on its last legs. It smoked and had no power. Nevertheless, all of us were grateful to have it. The Beetle got us, always slowly, to where we were going.

 

When my new friends returned to Mexico in the late fall of that year, they sold me their Bug. I drove it through the winter, freezing in the absence of an effective heater. Hand-scraping windshield ice off inside and outside, while I drove. Bug owners know how that goes.

 

The following spring, after the ski season ended, I rebuilt the car's engine. Afterward, I drove the Beetle from Colorado to the East Coast and back. It (comparatively) flew up hills.

 

In summer temperatures, the 1958 beetle was a delight. It even gobbled up some four-wheel drive roads. Try that it most modern sedans.

 

That fall, I sold it. One winter of coping with sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures in a frosty car — that I could often not see out of — had been enough.

 

In memory, though, the '58 Bug's value remains near the top of my 55-or-so owned vehicles list. It got me to where I needed to go, at a time when I really needed to be there.

 

 

This lesson in priorities soon repeated itself

 

Two or three years later, and still comparatively poor, I was again operating without a car. This time from even farther away from the same ski area.

 

A friend gave me a ride every day. She worked there, too.

 

But one day, her car quit running. She bought a used Datsun pickup to fill in for it.

 

The white Datsun seemed even slower than the Beetle had been going up the same mountain. But it also got us to where we needed to go in a reasonably reliable way. During the Datsun period, I saved enough money to buy an old, but zippier vehicle.

 

My friend and her humble truck rank high in life's gratitude.

 

 

The moral? — Does sensible prioritization combine with equanimity into being "good enough"?

 

The more complex this stew, the more difficult it is to find one's rational way.

 

Impulsiveness and unrestrained emotion would certainly shatter these conundrums' blockages.

 

But then, one might miss fundamental points about Something.

 

Or so, I tell myself. As I have, every day, for significantly more than five years.

 

Is action-lacking sloth of this kind a virtue?

 

Such questions, and their implications, are why Zen-ists often laugh.