There is a legend, maybe just the whisper of a rumor, of a place and time more mystical and elusive than Xanadu, El Dorado, etc. That place and time is the perfect day! Oh, there are plenty of good and bad days. Not quite as many great or horrible days. But a perfect day is like finding a four-leaf clover; very rare indeed. (Side note: I actually did find one of those once while I was in the U.K. I didn’t know they actually existed. It was that incident that served as a catalyst for blowing a good part of my family’s fortune on a year long expedition in Ireland searching for leprechauns. But that’s another blog.)

A perfect day for me would not necessarily be an accomplishment of anything huge. Honestly, just doing all the little things that I want done without any sort of hitch a feat I would consider impressive. A perfect day could look something like this: no stubbing of toes, writing my online entry (what I’m doing now), taking my vitamins, saying my prayers, the car running smoothly, having the exact amount of change when I buy something, practicing the guitar, responses to emails I sent out, my favorite sports teams winning, my NASDAQ stock going up, etc. There are inherent problems with having a perfect day; time being one of them. It also depends on what other people do as well; it’s hard enough motivating yourself to do things without having to get other people to do things your way. On the other hand, you would need other people’s help to have a perfect day; since we can’t do it all alone. A delicate balance, some would call it.

I went to a wedding this past weekend. Shelley, my friend Chad’s (the guy who designed this site; shameless promo for you, Chad) sister was the bride in this beautiful affair. It was set up on the shore of a rather large lake in the Jackson area. The weather was nice. However, there were some issues with the ceremony. For starters, the wedding was supposed to start at 6:00, but ended up starting at around 6:45. During the ceremony, there were people who were on jet-ski’s roaring by the ceremony, people were yelling “Don’t do it!” from passing party boats, and a strange man walked behind the pulpit. Hardly perfect.

Before you start accusing me a negative person, let me say that’s not my intent. There is a point to all this. Although some things could have been done without; I never saw Shelley happier before in all my life. She had just been married to a person she absolutely loved; vice versa for the groom, Daniel. I looked around at the wedding and the reception. All the people there probably had something go wrong that day. Look at me; I showed up to the wedding site, thinking that the wedding was at 3:00 instead of 6:00, and basically had to kill three hours that I could have been doing something productive.

But everyone at this ceremony was laughing, crying with joy, embracing, dancing, etc. Not a sad person did I see throughout the whole room. I saw old friends I haven’t seen in awhile, met new people, talked to people I see regularly. It was blessed event. This leads me to the reason we hardly experience perfect days. We don’t need them! Think of all the stress that goes with trying to get everything done exactly right; when at the end of the day, you could be just as content without getting everything perfect. We should all strive for excellence, but excellence is something that is achieved over a long period of time, not a day. And we can’t achieve excellence without a few bumps in the road.