In every moment we are caught up in a battle to improve things, to make something better. Ourselves, our lives. A project. Somebody else. Our skills. Somewhere we are or a country we visited. Feedback and suggestions keep us entertained. Ratings and markets guide us invisibly towards improvement. We deserve better, we tell ourselves. And we can do something about it.
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Looking up from the vegetable patch, Crei Bo gazed at the ornamentation strung along the eaves of the temple. Stone bunting had chipped and cracked, and the spaces were empty where angels and gargoyles should have hung. The minaret in front of the double doors could be taller. The double doors could be doubled again. The entrance bell no longer echoed the prayer of the founder, and would retire into myth soon enough. Not an old temple, but aging.
Crey smiled and went back to weeding the soil.
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Everything is imperfect because reality is imperfect. Decay and deviation are normal. Ideals exist in ideas, plucked from the harmonies of the universe and given semi-sentience on the dust filters of our imagination, caught there to tease us with their burlesque promises.
Comparing reality to non-reality: a dangerous errand. Chasing perfection: inevitably falling short.
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The mendicant doesn't need to fix everything. The wise heal by uniting things, realigning what is with what is acceptable, and what is acceptable with what is. A race can be completed easily by changing the finish line, the start line, the rules, or the weather.
A temple can always become a home for goats.
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Grey Pebbles, an intermittent mail out tracing a path back home. Subscribe here.
