David McElroy

My dogs and cats have taught me a lot of things over the years, though I’m sometimes slow to learn. Lucy taught me something this weekend — and I now feel foolish to realize she had to teach me something that should have been obvious.

Lucy hates vacuum cleaners. This is common with a lot of dogs and cats, but her fear is the worst I’ve ever seen. She seems to think her life is in danger and she goes into a terrible panic.

You might remember that when she came to live with me two years ago, I was told that she would always be a “special needs dog,” because she was terrified of the world. She’s made so much progress that I almost never see that side of her anymore — but the vacuum cleaner still brings it out.

I can be stubborn, for reasons that have to do with both personality and training, and I’ve been stubborn about the vacuum cleaner. I’ve said all this time that she had to get accustomed to this device eventually, so I’ve not kept her away from it.

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I’ve fallen into a hole today. Call it alienation. Call it depression. Call it longing. Call it whatever you want. There is loneliness in this hole. There is bitterness. There’s hurt and anger.

I need to stay away from most people today, because I’m not my best self when I’m in this hole.

In a private letter, the writer Edna St. Vincent Millay once gave me this metaphor. She wrote, “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

I woke up feeling this way — as though I had fallen into a hole during the night — but it was hours before I was conscious enough of it to realize what was going on.

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Western culture loves perfection. Anything that’s imperfect is rejected or at least offered at a steep discount. When someone asks about a newborn baby, you might hear the cliche, “He has all his fingers and toes.”

In our culture of mass production, we judge quality by how perfectly the widgets pressed out of industrial machinery match each other. It doesn’t matter how boring or soulless or poorly designed a thing is. It’s a quality item if it matches its specifications.

I grew up steeped in that culture of perfection, but the more of life that I experience, the more I’ve found beauty in a kind of imperfection that comes only from brokenness.

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