We’re on our way to the perfect place, the perfect place.
The skies are blue, fields are green,
water sparkles, air is clean.
It’s the prettiest place you’ve ever seen.
It’s the perfect place.

I have no idea why, but as a child of the early 70’s, this little song has stuck in my head from the old Saturday morning cartoon days. Based loosely on the Biblical Noah’s Ark story, Yogi’s Ark Lark featured nearly every early animated star from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon stable, the story was about Yogi Bear trying to find a perfect place to live, far from pollution, litter, smog, and trash. Yogi and Boo Boo were joined by Magilla Gorilla, Wally Gator, Quick Draw McGraw and others, as they tried to help Cap’n Noah in his quest to rid the world of environmental dangers while traveling around in a flying ark.

I remember this, the final episode, where Yogi realizes there IS no “perfect place”, but that he can make his own home the perfect place by cleaning it up himself.

It’s a neat little story that mirrors our own quest for perfection, a perfection that we will probably never find. Think of all the areas we look for, even strive valiantly for, perfection:

• Our finances and investments
• Our relationship with our spouse
• Our relationships with our children and family members
• Our relationships with friends ^[2]
• Our careers or business
• Our mental health
• Our emotional well-being
• Our physical prowess
• Our education
• Our blogs
• Our grades
• Our children’s grades (that one hurt)
• Our homes and landscaping
• Our cleanliness inside those homes
• Our decorating abilities
• Our time management ^[3]

What usually happens when we find that perfection is beyond our grasp? We move on to the next relationship, the next job, the next investment, the next home, the next living room suite, the next gym. We blame circumstances or other people rather than look within ourselves for the solution. We get hurt, and we hurt a lot of other people in the process. What we really need is a heavy dose of reality, maturity, and self discipline.

It’s okay, healthy even, to strive to be our best, but too many times we’re looking for absolute perfection, and we look for it in the wrong places. We look outside ourselves, and just like in the cartoon, we forget that all improvement begins with improving ourselves and our own attitudes. It begins with shedding our biases, our pride, our past hurts, and our self defeating preferences for our own personal comfort and happiness.

Changing your own attitude and taking responsibility for your life is a lot of work, but it’s the only way we will ever come close to finding the “perfect place.”

About the author

Ron has written 1082 articles on The Wisdom Journal.

The founder and editor of The Wisdom Journal ^[7] in 2007, Ron has worked in banking, distribution, retail, and upper management for companies ranging in size from small startups to multi-billion dollar corporations. He graduated Suma Cum Laude from a top MBA program and currently is a partner in a national building materials company.

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