What if there was a way to guarantee that everything you made would be beautiful?  Some sure-fire formula, a fool-proof recipe, a method which, even if not easy, promised predictable rewards?

Could you say “no” to such a tender trap?  Say “no” to knowing that your creations would always show your  loveliest face?  Or do we need the rough places?  Places where we skin our knees on selfishness, sharpen our petty axes, wake up in pain?  Maybe we even want to be unmasked for losing something we should know,  confessing at last that all our straining to remember has only washed it further and further from the shoreline?