I was always a science geek. Nearly any subject had the potential to fascinate me, but my true passion when I was young was astronomy. I didn't own a telescope (still don't), as I wasn't that interested in tracking the movements of stars and the constellations they sometimes form. But I loved to learn about the birth and death of stars, of galaxies, of the universe. It hurt my little preteen brain to try and envision something older than time, something so vast that it couldn't be driven across. And the most geektastic moment for me was at age 8, when the late Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" came onto PBS.
If you never watched it, you truly are missing out. Carl was able to bring the universe to your little 27" RCA TV, and I was absolutely riveted. Week after week, I watched in rapt attention as he and his turtleneck told me of the "billions and billions" of stars in our universe.
There was one very poignant moment in the series that slipped by me in my initial viewing, but would jump out at me when I reread his book many years later. It dealt with the death of stars, and of our own sun.
Billions of years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth. Thereafter, the Sun will slowly become red and distended, presiding over an Earth sweltering at the poles. The Arctic and Antarctic icecaps will melt, flooding the coasts of the world. The high oceanic temperatures will release more water vapor into the air, increasing cloudiness, shielding the Earth from sunlight and delaying the end a little. But solar evolution is inexorable. Eventually the oceans will boil, the atmosphere will evaporate away to space and a catastrophe of the most immense proportions imaginable will overtake our planet.
"A last perfect day".
Carl speaks of this on a much grander scale than my own life, but it struck me personally. Was this "day" the day that your life reached the pinnacle of achievement? The day after which everything went downhill? The last day you truly knew happiness?
I read this very shortly after my wife had an ectopic pregnancy that came closer than we'll ever know to taking her life. That day changed our lives forever. Was the day prior the "last perfect day"? No, I don't think so. Our lives since are immeasurably better, I feel.
Since reading that passage, it has stayed in the back of my mind. Every now and then, I look at our children, at my wife, and I wonder: is THIS my last perfect day? Sometimes it's a day where we seemed to be perfectly in sync as a family, and I think, "Can it get better than this?"
Other times, there's a day when I feel like I've been a bad parent, or an inconsiderate husband. I wonder to myself, "Was yesterday the last perfect day? Have I blown it now?"
Can you imagine if we were able to know that? When our last perfect day would be? Would you want to know? Not I.
I had a conversation with my wife last night. I explained to her that I had been attempting to idealize certain aspects of my life and had in the process lost sight of the fact that the reality was better for me than the idealized version. Indeed, not only was it better for me, but it was better in every possible way, and couldn't be improved upon.
I think that's the same way a "perfect day" would be. I've tried to create perfect days for myself, for my spouse and I, and for our family. Are they perfect? I don't know. They're normally quite enjoyable for most everyone. But I often end up feeling disappointed in something that didn't come to pass, or, worse, resentful, and then others end up with less enjoyment. My own attempts to create flawlessness inevitably create the fatal flaw. It's like some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle of relationships: the more you try to create a enjoyable situation for a person, the less joyful the other person becomes.
Perfection seems to be crafted from flaws, I'm starting to realize. My perfect days I can remember have plenty of flubs and screwups and miscalculations. And much of the joy, the pleasure, the smiles and laughter and delicious sensations come from these hiccups in our daily lives and our relationships. Like a grain of sand in an oyster, the irregularity is covered in beauty and turns into something precious, to be treasured for years.
I don't think I've had my last perfect day yet, and I hope it's far in the future. But when it takes place, I know that it will be a day that began as any other, but ended extraordinary.
