This is your dilemma.
For years, you only drink tepid, cloudy water. It does not taste good, to say the least. And sometimes, it even makes you sick. But this water source is the only liquid sustenance that you have access to, that you have ever known.
You have heard, of course, that there is such a thing as clean, bottled water. It’s basically tap water, filtered, but you have never tasted it. You have glimpsed it once or twice from afar, held in the hands of the fortunate. And you’ve heard comments about its satisfying taste. And the fact that it doesn’t give you a tummy ache. But you have never held a bottle in your hands.
You can only dream about it at night. Wonder what water free of impurities tastes like. Water that quenches your thirst but doesn’t leave an aftertaste – or an after ache.
You go on dreaming, full of wordless longing. It does not ever seem that things will change: you will go on drinking murky water and looking wistfully at the bottles beyond your reach.
Then, one day, beyond all expectation and hope, the miraculous occurs.
You awake to find that you have access to a better water source. Not just bottled and filtered tap water. No: pure spring water. Fresh from a virgin mountain source. You never even knew that something better than bottled water existed.
When you take your first sip, you cannot believe the taste. How cool and clean it feels on your tongue. How refreshing. You can scarcely believe that something that good exists. It exceeds your imagination of perfection.
You are euphoric. You pinch yourself, until your arms are black and blue, because you cannot believe your good luck. You are humbled by this gratuitous gift from the universe. It all feels very…surreal.
But then, you learn that you do not have eternal access to this water. How long you have it for cannot be told; it could be for the next 30 years or the next 30 days. It could be for the next 30 minutes. Only.
You also learn that you could give up the spring water and the uncertainty that accompanies it for what you had dreamed about just the day before: bottled filtered tap water. A very large supply of it – sure to last much longer than 30 minutes, or even 30 days. Perhaps even longer than 30 years. Possibly for your entire lifetime.
You’ve never tasted bottled tap water. And you’re not given a sample to try. You have to make your decision without knowing. You’re certain it must taste a great deal better than the stale, murky water that often made you sick. But you also know, deep down, that it can’t be as good as the fresh and icy mountain water that you’ve just tasted. Nothing could ever compare.
You have a short time to make your decision:
Trade your uncertain access to pure spring water for a certain supply of bottled water. Or take a chance and hope that you have something longer than 30-minute or 30-day access to the mountain-fresh liquid – even if it means you’ll almost certainly have to revert back to impure water when your access ends.
Could you be satisfied drinking bottled water now that you’ve tasted pure spring water? Could you live with yourself for not taking a chance? Could you live with yourself for taking a chance that, in the end, results in utter disappointment – especially when you could be guaranteed something that, just yesterday, you had dreamed about, had held up as your ideal?
In the end, can you settle for good enough, instead of great? You know that good enough is more than what most people get to begin with, but – you also can’t forget what great tastes like, and you don’t believe you ever will.
What would you do?
