I used to know a guy who loved to bake cookies. He was socially inept and often felt left out of things, but when he made cookies, he became the man of the hour, because his cookies were like heaven made edible. He really should have gone into business. He’d have made a fortune. People would line up for them. For a brief shining moment, he could slough off his usually rock-bottom self-esteem and actually feel like a winner.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He kept tweaking his recipe, because greatness is never great enough, is it? He’d fiddle with ingredients and temperatures and cooking times. Even the brand of brown sugar he used became a major point of concern for him.
As he moved away from his original recipe, his cookies became less palatable. At first the changes were subtle, so the feedback was still positive. That only encouraged him to make more changes. Eventually his cookies became, frankly, awful.
I would watch people who used to clamor for his creations become more and more quiet. The looks on their faces when they bit into one of these “improved” concoctions told it all, but since the baker lacked the ability to pick up on social cues, he just baked merrily on.
With the passage of time the situation was more and more depressing to witness. Fewer people requested batches of cookies. And when they were given them as gifts, they’d be left to grow stale. No one had the heart to tell him that his greatness was a thing of the past.
The moral of the story, I suppose, is if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
[Image credit: denicascafe.com]
The View from a Drawbridge 
Oh sure, if you are only going to include cookies from Earth…
Well, I lead a sheltered life.
You humans are so Earth-centric…