entropy in half-stereo

Headphones break. That's what they do. I'm sitting here with my only remaining set of headphones in which both ear-thingies work, but there's no longer anything to hold them on my head. They are the big can-types phones that smother your ears and I have to hold them up with my hands or scrunch it up to my ear with my shoulder. I'm just trying to listen to some sounds late at night without waking people up but the impermanence of all things electronic is foiling my enjoyment.

I have a bunch of headphones that only half work or that I could probably fix if I had a soldering iron. That's the saddest part of entropy: There's that one shining moment of flawless operation, then majority of its existence is spent moldering in uselessness. I wish that when things broke, they went out in a puff of smoke. Scratch in your car? Poof, it's gone. It's unworthy of your worship now anyway. Cracks in the sidewalk? Rip it up before it gets any worse. I'll walk in the grass. At least that's self-healing.

I guess that's one impulse behind consumerism and planned obsolescence: staying ahead of the constant deterioration of matter. Of course, most people--including myself--don't have enough money to keep everything perfect. No new headphones for me until I get a job. You know, a job to pay for new headphones. To break. Noooo.

Perfection is a dangerous illusion. Maybe some people are inspired by the ideal, but for those of us who, perhaps, take things too literally, it paralyzes. If perfection is unreachable, what, then, is the goal? In my life I have been plagued by this mindset: Why can't I just do something in the proper way--the way they tell you it's done? When things start out wrongly I feel like quitting. This is not to say that I don't think I can succeed. There's just this nagging feeling that if I hit reset and start again, things will go as intended--like throwing away your broken stuff and buying all new--I swear this time I'll take care of it.

I think the answer is to proceed in the best way possible--with a clear set of principles. Example: I don't know everything about life or death or God or the Universe. In fact I surely hold a lot of wrong ideas, but this doesn't bother me. Instead I wish simply to go forth with integrity of purpose. I think that even in failure, no endeavor taken with such integrity is a waste.

Holy crap, I actually started this post intending just to bitch about broken headphones. Sometimes I scare myself.