All too often, this admonition is forgotten, and you refrain from actions that would be just fine—or even better—simply because they don’t stack up to some preconceived notion about what ought to be. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you don’t have standards; it’s just means you don’t use those standards as a cudgel to crush opportunities that present themselves, warts and all.
Case in point:
Sure, the Platonic Form of post-holiday combustion events involves something like a hundred fir trees stoked up into a massive conflagration sending sparks and embers several furlongs into the sky.
And yes, in the proverbial perfect world, every single rider would arrive at Westlake with some flammable remnant of the Christmas season strapped to their body or bike.
Moreover, the idealized version of the evening wouldn’t include even a minor crash occasioned by the embrace of pine needles rolling down the avenue.
However.
The real world isn’t like that. If life gives you lemons, as the great Beyoncé reminds us, make lemonade.
Or, in this case, a perfectly imperfect bonfire.
There was that ten-minute span, when the first few of the apparently sparse offerings were giving up their carbon, while the rain came down in sheets, making you feel like the idiot your mom always said was too dumb to come in out of the weather, and it seemed like that was all there was, night over.
At that point, you might have concluded that since this wasn’t all that, then it wasn’t anything, and gone home, blinded by your vision of what should be to the wonder of the actual.
But in doing so, you would have missed at least a dozen more contributions to the communal pyre and a full moon so bright it made double moonbows in what became a perfectly dry night sky.
Perfect.