Subject to Change
This column is perfect. Faultless. Impeccable. It just needs a few minor tweaks.
By Philip Gulley
I recently traveled to Canada to speak at a Lutheran church. They had arranged for me to stay at a bed-and-breakfast for the three days I was there. I don’t care for bed-and-breakfasts. They are overly cute, and their owners are fussy and often prying. I feel as if I’m staying with my aunt. But the bed-and-breakfast in Canada was a welcome change. It was built of logs salvaged from an 1831 cabin, then relocated to a lake on the northern outskirts of Toronto. The couple who owned the house were pleasant, appropriatelyengaging, and, best of all, knew when to make themselves scarce.
They had owned the home four years, and over dinner one evening told me of the many improvements they’d made to the place. “Yes,” the woman said, “the first time we saw this house, we fell in love with it.” Then why, I wanted to ask, did they change it?
There beats in every human heart an impulse for change.
On our second date, my first girlfriend said she loved everything about me, but then spent the next six months trying to alter every aspect of my personality.
I wrote a book this past year and sent it to my editor, who read it, pronounced it “absolutely perfect,” then returned it to me marked with red ink.
When we moved into our home, my wife and I agreed it was the ideal house for us.
“This is the perfect place to raise our children,” I told my wife. “I like everything about it.”
Since then, we’ve pulled up the carpet and put down hardwood flooring, added a patio, finished the garage, replaced the interior trim work, removed perfectly fine appliances to put in new ones, replaced 13 windows, bought a new furnace and air conditioner, installed a woodstove, painted the outside three times and the inside twice, updated the lighting, installed new cabinets and countertops, and planted 17 new trees and two dozen bushes.
I’m glad our house was perfect as it was. I don’t think I could have afforded any improvements.
When Barack Obama was elected president, we were all a little prouder to be living in an America that had overcome its prejudice against people of color. What a great country, we told ourselves, right before we told Obama we wanted him to change it.
Visit Philip Gulley's personal website here.
