Good Is Better Than Perfect

and other affirmations for the new year

I had a page-a-day desk calendar all of 2022, and this quote came up recently. It’s from Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, the book he called “the first book” in his journals. It’s a retelling of the book of Genesis in the Torah, and it’s a sprawling and often brutal novel that follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

It’s been too long since I’ve read the novel to remember the specifics of this quote but as a recovering perfectionist, it stuck with me. It also reminds me of the Voltaire quote “Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” So often when we focus on trying to achieve perfection, we miss out on “good enough.”

Which reminds me of a third favorite quote: “Good enough is both good and enough.”