Patio Pondering: “Good Enough” and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
This morning dawned with high winds and rain. I shut off my early alarm because I hadn’t made it to bed until late. One strong cup of coffee finally snapped my eyes open to yet another dreary morning on the patio.
After this week’s reflection about “almost fit,” I finally pulled the trigger on one of the shirts that I know actually fits. There was a clearance sale on that style, so I stocked up with an online order of eight shirts in various plaid designs to maintain my Captain Plaid title.
As I stood at my closet, contemplating what to wear, I remembered the pile of new shirts sitting on the kitchen counter. I headed downstairs shirtless, ripped open one of the packages, and put one on. It was like getting a hug from an old friend. The shirt just fit.
Today’s reflection isn’t about giving you permission to finally do that thing you’ve always wanted. My experience with “finally” purchasing shirts that fit is more about how much we tolerate things that sort of work — tools, habits, clothing — things we make work, even if they aren’t quite right. We all have them in our closets, kitchens, and farm shops.
In many cases, those “almost fit” solutions do work, or at least seem to. More importantly, they save us from spending money or burning mental energy on replacing them. I’ve said it plenty of times: “I don’t need to spend the money because this gets the job done.” And in terms of my closet, those almost-fitting shirts covered me — mostly.
But what happens when “almost works” doesn’t? When the Rube Goldberg setup in the shop costs more in time or parts than a proper tool would have? Or when someone actually gets injured using the wrong tool that technically worked… until it didn’t?
What struck me this morning is that the mindset is the same across the board. We tolerate “almost” because it functions, because it feels thrifty, because replacing it means making decisions, and because there is always something more urgent to deal with. There’s a certain pride in making do, wearing the adaptation like a Merit Badge.
Yet the moment something actually fits, you feel the gap you’ve been tolerating.
In my case, the old shirts did their job, but these new ones give me the satisfaction of a correct fit. I don’t have to wrestle with short shirttails or sleeves that look borrowed from a younger cousin. Now I can pull some of the old shirts from my closet that I’ve tolerated over the years, regardless of how I paid for them. Unfortunately, my Captain Plaid affinity did not transmit to my sons, so there will be no hand-me-downs.
In our personal lives and workplaces, we know how much better things go when we finally use the right tool or the right fit. And yet we all have things we continue to tolerate that almost fit, almost work, almost profit.
So the question that lingered over my coffee was simple:
Why do we insist on tolerating almost?