And here we have my favorite quote from the whole book.
“Don’t let perfect become the enemy of the good.”
Too often, we reject something because it’s not perfectly what we wanted, when it’s good enough and would certainly be better than nothing.
Of course, the book discussed this in relation to politics – environmental politics to be specific. (And I certainly felt that there werw a good number of people who could have stood to keep this in mind during the last election.) But I personally think it’s a good thing to keep in mind in just general life. Don’t be so quick to dismiss something – an idea, a proposal, a solution, or even more concrete things – because they’re not perfect.
On page 180, he also quotes John Adams.
Great quote by Voltaire. I recently heard a version of it in a great Beth Moore Bible study that I’m doing. But she was urging us not to let the good get in the way of the best. As in…don’t settle for “good” in your life when God has the best planned for you. Not exactly the same thing, but it reminded me of that
I struggled with that as I wrote the above. Sometimes good enough is NOT good enough. Sometimes we should NOT settle for good enough.
But just as often, we reject something as being not perfect enough when it would be just fine.
(Example – is any given politician 100% perfect? Led an ideal life, agrees with me on everything, etc? Probably not. But completely rejecting them on that basis when they’d probably be a very good representative is silly.)