The other evening I got to thinking about how much I enjoyed my little motorcycle ride to get my facial last week. Riding up to Normal Heights to go to an appointment is a very typical ride for me. I don’t take long rides out into the mountains or desert; I ride in town. I use the Triumph as joyful transportation–running errands and the like. Even when I go to Cabrillo or Soledad, I will almost always stop and pick up some groceries or whatever, before going home. I ride to sangha. I ride to go someplace–not just to ride. This means I ride at least once a week, more often, weather permitting. No big planning–just put on the gear and go.
My ex has/d a motorcycle. When he rode, it was pretty much exclusively on long excursions into the hills or desert. We’re talking hours-long trips requiring GPS and planning1, like to Julian and beyond. With all that complexity and time required, he rode less often than I. The few times we rode together, on separate machines I mean, he acted kind of resentful when I said I wanted to keep it shorter2. It took me a while to understand what was going on: it wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned, so it wasn’t okay. He had problems with good enough. With compromise. With acceptance.
Honestly, that seems to be an issue for a lot of (cishet) men I know–being comfortable with good enough.
For example, when a (cishet, throughout this post) man buys a car or truck, his next stop is to some aftermarket place to change out the wheels or add on a rack or tint or, well, something substantial. Most of the women I know buy a car (or truck) and, well, simply drive it. At most, they may get a mount for their phone (if needed) or maybe a decorative seat cover, but nothing huge. Guys, on the other hand, are swapping out suspensions and exhaust systems! No matter how much they love their new vehicle, it isn’t good enough as it is. It must be tweaked, improved, made better. I have definitely noticed that every modified vehicle that drives through the neighborhood has a guy behind the wheel.
Do the men you know ever just buy something from Ikea and put it together exactly as it was designed to be, or do they paint it or modify it somehow? I know a ton who do the latter.
Even houses. A woman will think about painting a wall or getting new window coverings when she buys a house. While later she may want to make changes, in my experience at the time of purchase, she accepts the house as good enough. A guy, on the other hand, will think “Yeah, I’ll buy it, but this place will be perfect when we get a bathroom added.” My ex was this way when we bought the house and I was really surprised by it. He said he loved the house3; but, right after we moved in, he talked about massive changes: add a second story kinds of changes. In my head I was thinking “Why did we just spend $850,0004 on something that isn’t good enough for you?”
This failure to accept good enough makes no sense to me. Why not be satisfied with something just as it is? I’m not talking about settling, I’m talking about accepting something, as it is. Settling, to me, is when you can’t get good enough so you reluctantly make do (I can’t get chocolate? Damn, okay, I’ll live with vanilla5); accepting something as good enough is, well, more positive: sure, the car doesn’t have 200hp, but it’s fine as it is.
In relationships, good enough is extra important. First, there is the good enough of compromise. No one is perfect and every partnership requires compromise of some sort. A compromise is, for example, partner A wants to watch X movie, partner B wants to watch Y movie, let’s agree to flip a coin and we’ll watch the winner’s tonight and the other tomorrow. Good enough.
More importantly and fundamentally, however, you have to accept (and, I would add, happily) your partner as they are. That is, your partner needs to be good enough in your heart and mind exactly as they are now, not what they may become in the future. “I don’t like basketball and he does, and that’s fine” is healthy; “I don’t like basketball and he needs to stop liking it” is not. “S/he has potential” is a recipe for a bad relationship.
And I don’t just mean romantic relationships. One needs to accept friends (and family, if one chooses) just as they are. The whole of them. You don’t have to like every bit–maybe you have a friend who is chronically late; it’s fine to say “hey, it bugs me when you’re late” but don’t try to fix them. Accept that they are who they are (Betty Latearriver) or let go and maybe get a new friend.
Moreover, if you apply it to yourself, accepting good enough is a form of self-compassion: I’m good enough, exactly as I am now. Maybe I will change X or Y someday, but I am 100% happy with who I am today. It’s not downplaying future growth–maybe next year I’ll learn Japanese; right now I’m learning to crochet–but rather a full acceptance of our inherent okayness, now. In the moment.
Frankly, I think a lot of the problems with the techbros and the MAGA-folk can be traced to an inability to accept good enough. The push for more more more, the greed, looking down at others, othering groups (immigrants, LGBTQ+, etc.), seeing enemies (where they don’t exist)…it all seems to circle back to a failure to accept good enough…in themselves. I think most of them strike out at others (and grab whatever they can asset-wise) so that they can feel better about themselves. I think the push against professionalism, specialization, credentialing, etc., (think MAHA, anti-vax, etc.) is all connected to this. They take offense at superior knowledge and/or skills, personalize them, and say “You’re not better than me just because you’re a lawyer/doctor/scientist/etc.” rather than accepting the differences between people and their skill sets. They can’t see themselves as good enough and hold the possibility of someone being better, in any arena. That is, they see it as an attack against themselves as good enough generally if someone knows more than them about, say, medicine.
These fragile egos…causing their own suffering and the suffering of so many others, simply because they can’t hold themselves as imperfect and good enough. It’s quite sad.
I don’t know. These are, of course, just my thoughts. All I can say with any true knowledge is that I’ve found that accepting good enough has contributed to less suffering in my life. It has definitely brought me more joy. Like the motorcycle–I didn’t need the bestest or fanciest model and I can get something out of almost any ride. Makes me think: maybe more folks should try it.
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- To be sure, I know a lot of men who do this: they have their long weekend rides, often with other guys, like up Palomar or to take the curves of the S1. There is nothing wrong with it, but these same guys often won’t ride on an errand–like it has to be a production or something. ↩︎
- I was also a new rider (despite my many years of riding pillion) and my moto is considerably smaller than his–literally half the engine size. ↩︎
- To be honest, he was actually more thrilled with it than I was at purchase–I liked it very much and accepted it as, gasp, good enough, then later grew to love it. ↩︎
- An unrelated side note: coming from Ohio, I couldn’t deal with the house prices when we were looking and would repeatedly, unconsciously, subtract $500K from any price. It was like a twitch. So, the house was $350K in my Ohio brain even though I knew, rationally, it was $850K. ↩︎
- Of course, there is Sally in When Harry Met Sally who modified any food she ordered. To me, this is not about not accepting good enough but rather asking for what one wants. If she, for example, ordered straight off the menu then, when she got the food, complained about it, that would be not accepting good enough. ↩︎