I love to use dashes (--) in my writing, but I am going to have to stop, because the dash key on my laptop is malfunctioning. You have to dash it very hard with your finger to get a dash out of it. Isn't that just the way with life? You find something you really like, you have a short and blissful romance with the thing, and then it's gone. I can think of only two constants in my life--cigarettes and coffee.
Oh, and MS. There's another constant. It is a malfunction that functions along quite reliably. I guess these are the sorts of things one can truly rely upon. It's like my first wife used to say. Things almost never change in life, but when they do, they change for the worse.
Contained in the use of what one loves or enjoys is the eventual end of the same. It's some kind of law in physics. Take the laptop for instance. It starts out running with such speed and competence, an amazing machine, wonderfully made. Then before you know it perfection begins to develop little quirks and complaints, it limps, it coughs and wheezes. Your favorite part, the dash key, clutches its heart and falls down dead.
Herein lies the ultimate nature of reliability and the lasting definition thereof. Malfunction will forever have the final word.
Just think about it. Your laptop, your cell phone, your car, your alarm clock. Your mate, your love, your body, your health. Are they not all headed, and quite reliably so, toward extinction?
Here then is the key to peace in all things, to understand that perfection is a matter of the moment which itself soon falls to the lap of malfunction.
In other words, ones long term goal ought to be ones happiness in the short term.
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