Ms. 8:  (suspiciously) Mommy, did you clean up my room?
Me: Yeah, honey, a little bit.  I folded a few of those shirts from your floor.
Ms. 8:  (satisfied) I thought so.  There were some pieces of blank space that I didn't put in here.

A philosopher friend asked how it's possible to hold high standards (which, being high, cannot ever be met) and simultaneously be happy.

I thought about that.  This is what I thought:

I'm not sure it's impossible to hold standards and live happily.  I believe devout religious believers do this - at least some do - because for them, happiness IS the standard, and the quest to achieve the standard is part of a voyage that, although it cannot end in success, will nevertheless (if you're good) get you far enough for those Pearly Gates (even if God cannot be scientifically proven to exist, it IS apparently scientifically proven that believing in Him makes you happier.  Quite the quandary right there.)

For those of us with the sense that the mortal coil is all we've got, things get stickier.  Today's stickiness (just today's, just anecdotally): I'm sitting on the sofa after work and dinner, laptop in hand, writing a volunteer-related email.  Ms. 8's bugging me.  Really bugging me.  She wants quality time with her Mom.  I don't have it to give.  I want organizing time and email time and just plain me-time, damnit.  I'm laughing falsely and typing and trying to hold it together.  I click the wrong thing and open up the NYT.  Front image:  all those white-wrapped dead children in Gaza.  Jeeezusfuckinchr.....!  A million things pour through the mind.  Hamas' cold-bloodedly calculating strategies about firing from the protection of the populace.  Israel's dreams, perennially upheld behind blood-soaked barricades.  US sanctimonious complicity.  My own willingness to shut eyes, shut purse, turn away.  All those grieving parents.  All those mothers, just like me....Ms. 8 comes around the edge of the computer.  "What's that, Mommy?"  "The newspaper, honey." I close the laptop.  I follow her into the kitchen.  She's skipping.  How can one ever find happiness in so ephemeral a moment as this one small, happy child-skip instant, lost in a morass of my own - and my society's - inadequacies?  Oh, God.  Or, no, wait - He doesn't exist.