Just Thinking
by Rosalind Foley on 04/23/14
As must be apparent by now, I am a collector of wise , witty and/or provocative sayings. One of these is "Less is more." Another is Claudel's "The good is the enemy of the better."
Indeed.
My son and his wife have a new determiner for purchases. Unless they react to something- whether clothing, a different car or a new skillet - with a hearty "Hell, yeah!" they pass it up. They have made me realize how often we settle for things that don't quite fit, things that are all right but not quite ideal, possibly even things we don't really need.
In writing, too, the good is the enemy of the better. Especially as we near the end of a long project, we can be tempted to rush through and settle for good enough. It take energy, mental and physical, to push ourselves a little farther and get the best, but both the writer and the reader will know the difference.
