Good enough

Thankfully I'm not a perfect-ionist. Wanting everything to be brilliant, unique, or just better than it is, must be an exhausting and impossible task. Personally I'm happy for things to be "good enough" and I'll stop right there, thanks.

And by "good enough" I don't mean skimping or accepting something a bit shoddy. I just mean I aim for a certain standard, one most people would be comfortable with, and striving for some rarified excellence doesn't interest me.

I don't want a kitchen that's 100% hygienic and germ-free. I don't want bed linen that matches the wallpaper. I'm not going to mow the lawn every three days. I'm not going to replace all my nondescript shirt buttons. Life's too short for such nonsense.

But I've known people who were obsessive about housework, who couldn't bear a speck of dust or splodge of grease anywhere. Or obsessive about work, always scanning their emails, rewriting memos and double-checking every little detail. Or gardening fanatics who couldn't stop weeding and pruning and power-jetting the patio.

It must be hard to live with a relentless perfectionist. No matter how often you say everything's fine as it is, they'll insist they just have to tweak this or adjust that, and nothing will deter them. They won't be able to sleep at night if the soup spoons don't match or the plates are wrongly stacked.

Perfectionists have their place though. A world without them would be an inferior one. Without the frenzied perfectionists who invented the washing machine and the internet and the CD player, and who fought for improved legal rights and housing standards and working conditions, our lives would be much depleted.

I'm just not that driven. I want an easy life. So sue me.

Chicago

Okay, secrecy over, I'm actually in Chicago, the city of skyscrapers and the El (the elevated subway tracks). And of course diversity.

The people of Chicago originate from all over the world. They've been coming here from other countries literally for centuries, since Chicago has always been one of the most prosperous American cities.

It feels great to wander the (very hot) streets with such a global pot-pourri, all energetically making their way in this bustling city. Every other person seems to be speaking Spanish, and a hundred cultures make themselves felt.

Most of the time this eclectic mix of people have co-existed quite harmoniously. There have been occasional flare-ups, like the burning and looting of white-owned businesses by angry blacks after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. But in general there's a feeling of acceptance, goodwill and openness.

Chicago is also an inventive city. It created zippers, mail-order, TV remote-control, the birth-control pill, nuclear fission, the Ferris Wheel, and of course bigger and better skyscrapers.

It's always attracted people with unconventional minds who could see better ways of doing things and were given the chance to try them out.

Though some things seem to have escaped their attention. The subway system is still run-down and exasperatingly slow. It took me a good hour to get from O'Hare Airport to the city centre, a journey of about 12 miles. And naturally I had to contend with the customary lunatic screaming inanely about black bitches.

But one thing they do well is local history. The Chicago History Museum in Lincoln Park is a mine of information on how the city began, how it developed, the disasters it had to cope with (like the Great Fire of 1871 that destroyed 17000 buildings), and how it has constantly reinvented itself.

Its citizens certainly seem proud of their adventurous and exuberant city.