There's no such thing as a perfect paradise

I made it to yoga tonight!  First time since July.  I was surprised at which parts were tight and which parts were strong.  Apparently my abs got stronger while I was hiking this summer.

While I was driving there from work I was thinking about how nice it is to take a break from whatever it is you're doing.  If you're working hard, it's nice to go to the beach.  If you're at the beach, eventually that gets boring and you want to go see the shops.  The shops are busy so you want to sit down somewhere quiet.  And so on.

I often have fantasies that revolve around doing something different from whatever it is I'm doing right now.  The problem is that something different doesn't remain different for very long.  I'm sure somebody has worked out how to keep a little variability in life so that one never gets bored.  Or how to accept sameness.  I haven't, though.

For me, at least, that means that there is no perfect situation.  If I have two weeks off of work, sitting on the sofa with a book sounds great the first day.  Not so great the second day.  By day three I'm totally fed up.  (You can imagine how much fun I am when I'm sick or injured.)

Fortunately, the longer I live the more I recognize this trait in myself.  Experience has given me the ability to appreciate what I'm doing (say, applying software updates while sitting at the computer in my office) by remembering all those times I was doing something else and wished to be at the office (hiking in cold rain, mowing a pasture for the fifth hour, vacuuming any time ever.)

As my train of thought so often does, it led me to hiking.  I like hiking.  A lot.  I dream of finishing a thruhike.  But what that actually means is walking all day, every day, for a really long time. Even in a place of astonishing beauty, this can get tedious.  I read often of former thruhikers who claim that if they did it again, they would take fewer days off.  I wonder if they really remember what it's like to be out there, after they're done.  When I'm hiking long distance, I *treasure* my days off.  Sleeping on a bed I didn't have to inflate, flipping a light switch instead of fishing out my headlamp, and eating delicious food that somebody else cooked (and that I didn't carry anywhere), are all extremely pleasant activities after a week of hiking.  I mean, camping pretty much rocks.  The sitting around the fire, watching the sunset, smelling the evergreens parts of camping all rock. The washing the dishes, setting up the tent, dealing with muddy clothes part of camping?  Not so much.

I'm not so profound tonight, I guess.  But I think it's an important if small revelation.  I should not plan on doing one thing for the rest of my life.  I need to change it up.  Perfect doesn't make me happy.  I mean, I like perfect, but perfect loses its perfection after a while.