One of the Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferries, the M/V Salvo, taken in mid-2024. I was aboard the other ferry, the M/V Avon, at the time. (my work)
The quote comes from a sign I saw in Minnesott Beach, North Carolina, during November 2000. It was just past sunrise and I was driving back from a clandestine trip. I was on my way to my brother’s apartment for Thanksgiving, and I discovered I had plenty of time, so instead of taking my usual route I took a more scenic route that involved the Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry and two, two-lane highways. Somewhere along one of them I passed a store with an arrow sign in front of it. To this day I don’t remember what the store was or, even, its exact location.
But I’ve never forgotten what I saw on the sign itself: life doesn’t have to be perfect to be spectacular.
I thought about that sign and its message for the next hour or so while finishing the drive to my brother’s apartment. It’s a simple sentence with only nine words in it, but I also found it surprisingly profound. It could illustrate an attitude of gratefulness for what one has. It could be a reminder that things don’t have to be perfect for someone to have a good life. It suggested an attitude of wonder about life itself. It was a reminder that even when bad things happen, there are still opportunities for happiness and joy.
Since it was Thanksgiving morning, I imagine that the owner of the store was talking about being grateful for what you have. But the sentence, and all its myriad meanings, have always echoed through my mind. Over the years, it has become something of a personal philosophy.
Given that I was driving back from somewhere I shouldn’t have been, and thus was on a road I wasn’t supposed to be taking, there’s an extra layer of personal meaning as well. It’s a reminder that sometimes the best things come from the worst situations, and that bad choices can still lead to positive learning.
That small sentence went on to become particularly poignant several months later when the September 11 attacks happened, and people wondered if they were seeing the end of the world as we knew it. The memory of that sign reminded me that even if we were, there were still going to be opportunities for spectacular moments in that new world. I began remembering the sentence as a way of holding on to hope even as my world did, in fact, change in significant ways.
That was when I first added it to my personal email signature.
I set up my first web site in 2003, and it wasn’t long before I incorporated the quote into its design. It’s been there ever since, in one form or another. (On one iteration of the site, I even used the Latin translation.) It currently appears in the footer of this site, and I see no reason not to continue with that practice.
Sometime around 2013, I had sent an email to my supervisor from my personal account. She noticed the quote in my signature and told me, “oh, I like that a lot! It’s short but it’s amazing.” To my knowledge, she never used the quote herself, but that email broke the barriers of our strained relationship and she and I got along very well after that.
Nine words. Short, but powerful. Connected with many different memories and still a part of my personal philosophy today, twenty-four years after I first saw that sign.
Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be spectacular.