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Perfect Lies

They creep in when I am tired. They never come in through the front door. Always one will scratch at a screen on one side of my mind while its mate scampers in the open window opposite. Pesky little creatures, they will run about my mental house turning over furniture, breaking mirrors and creating havoc. Sometimes they leave quickly. Sometimes they remain for days on end. Sometimes they settle in and take up permanent residence.

There are many types of lies, but the most numerous for me are those based on that master lie of lies - perfection. For example, the chairs in the living room of my thoughts are sturdy, covered with many different textures and colors, and are shaped for the contours of a wide range of bottoms. Some of them rock a bit due to irregularities in the length of their legs, but on the whole they provide comfortable seating for me and any guests who happen to drop by. I have come to cherish them as much as, if not more than, longtime friends and family.

This happy state of affairs is disrupted as soon as perfection enters. Perfection invariably casts a harsh, judgmental eye over my collection. It claims to hold the one true measure and standard of “chair-ness” and uses this tool to assess the qualities of any chair on which it happens to sit. In smug, self assurance, perfection pronounces the endless ways my mental furniture fails to measure up; turning every characteristic into flaws and shortcomings. Under its baleful gaze, all my chairs are broken down and scarcely worthy keeping about the place.

“This chair is too mushy. How is a body supposed to find support in this pile of oatmeal?” says perfection when it sits on my dreams of love and kindness.

Moving to my hopes about my writing, perfection will say, “This chair is truly pitiful and narcissistic. Its paint is sloppy. It shows little promise of becoming anything other than a plant stand for cacti – tiny cacti, the variety that never grows but merely sits there in endless contemplation of its insignificant thorniness.”

“Why is this chair even here at all?” perfection says about my joy in science and reason. “This chair isn’t really even a chair. It’s more like an iron bench, a rusty one. How you ever hope to use it as anything other than an instrument of torture is beyond me. Can you not see it is too cold, rigid and ugly for use by anyone who values beauty and inspiration?”

On and on, perfection will rant; removing any and all joy I might take in my furnishings. By the end of a visit by perfection I am ready to burn down the entire house, or at a minimum, commit myself to a hospital for refurbishing. Lately however, I have begun to see that thoughts based on perfection are lies and illusion.

I know of no place in nature where perfection exists. It relies on my believing in some supernatural place of residence – a perfect land containing the true essences of all things; a land from which I and my “pitiful” life have “fallen” to become but pale shadows of the true beauty in their former home. Where this perfect land exists, who requires it to exist and how it is maintained are questions that seem open to considerable debate. Many people claim to know the location of the land of perfection, and are willing, even insistent, on showing me the path for getting there.

Unfortunately, there seems to be considerable disagreement on the matter of perfection’s location and the path to achieving it. To me this illustrates “perfectly” why perfection is more a matter of opinion than a tangible fact. The most “perfect” diamond, a crystal of “pure” carbon, contains at least a few molecules of other elements. A perfect one or a perfect zero has never been measured – each attempt landing somewhere slightly above or below the mark. In computers, this “imperfection” is one of the major causes of program errors. The platinum/iridium bar used as the standard for measuring meters changes over time as molecules are oxidized. No substance is perfectly pure. No action generates perfectly good or perfectly bad outcomes. I may “imagine” or “dream” of descending from a perfect world but doing so is no more fruitful than imagining I have come from a planet inhabited entirely by unicorns.

Knowing this simple fact gives me great comfort. It helps me be gentle with myself and others. It allows me to recognize that none, “not no one, not no how” to quote the guard at the gate of Oz, can claim perfection. My agnosticism about the matter has allowed me to realize that pursuing perfection as a path of happiness makes as much sense as pursuing leprechauns to find their pot of gold. I recognize that it is “possible” that there is a land of perfection. There may be leprechauns. There may even be a pot of gold. There is no way to “perfectly” prove the non-existence of anything. However, based on the evidence and experience I have seen to date I see that the probability of perfection and leprechauns is vanishingly small.

With this knowledge, I can return to my mental home and rest in relative ease. My chairs are not broken. I may choose to refurnish or repaint them from time to time, but I do so as an accommodation and kindness to my guests and the society in which I live. I do not find it helpful to arrange and alter my mental furnishings in pursuit of abstractions such as perfect mental health, perfect emotional sobriety, perfect kindness, perfect enlightenment or any other form of perfect. It is far better for me to appreciate the beauty of my chairs and be grateful for the comfort they provide. I leave perfection to those who can only achieve happiness by constantly striving for ever greater enlightenment, truth, or (insert favorite goal here). Once I was among their number, dreaming of a day when I finally would achieve perfection of some kind or another (even if it was only to be the perfect me). Today I find that pursuing perfection can be an entertaining hobby but that it is a poor career choice. Perfection is a lousy houseguest. I intend to show it the door with ever increasing frequency.

Evidence and Lost Innocence

Further evidence of insanity...

Danny said, “Couldn't help wonderin' if besides lovin' women didn't I love men a little too? Didn't hardly know what to do. So I wrote.”

Once again the night has woken me without a sound. Unless you count the voices in my head. There is that within them that cannot be named; beauty, beauty, beauty, and pain beyond all measure. The night hides wonders of razor edged joy so sublimely ravaged by fear and anger that they throw me from bed wide eyed in wonder so awesome and profound that sleep must be left to times of a duller mind.

What to be said? What to be seen? What to be sung in this place of dreams?

Buried deep in this old man's brain, a young child's heart sees scenes cast away against it's will: a lazy afternoon of sunshine; a grassy hill edged with a blackberry's thorny sweetness; a lover's arms, pale and flecked with red from ancestors who sailed wooden ships from seas to the north. He lies next to me, his creamy skin glows against green almost deep enough to be blue. I stare into his eyes. There is mystery there and longing for the love I was told never to express. I can call him Billy but his names are many and his love is sweet. From a deep grave of forbidden earth it calls to me. How can I reach it? How can it be freed? How can I know if it is imagined? Is it a reality or just a disease?

No. It is not sickness. This love is whole not broken. It is profound not profane. It is a sacred celebration separated by eternity from the lies of disease and sin.

Billy let me kiss you. I will slide my tongue along your lips. My nose will nuzzle your ear, finding that little spot perfectly shaped for safe harbor. Let me gaze into turquoise eyes rimmed with copper lashes. I will feel your breath, warm with the smell of fruit. Your hand will brush my cheek, rousing my blood with joy freed from eons of guilt. Your smile will show me that life indeed lives in this chest, that what fills my lungs is pure not diseased, that happiness comes even if others call it evil. I will open my mouth to your tongue's embrace. My fingers will trace a path from your nipples - down, down, to caress your softness and feel it harden in my hand. Lips will follow the trail blazed by touch, opening to enfold the musty and vibrant wonder, taking it deep and deeper still. Mouth and member will move in rhythm to a pulse ancient and profound taking us beyond self, catapulting us into brilliance. I shall rise and slide into you, feel your warmth caress me, welcome me, hold me tight as if saying, “Never leave. Never leave. Stay within forever.” Pulsing quickly we will soar to a timeless place where love explodes into the all within all. We will sleep in each others arms and wake to evening's cool breeze. I will kiss the top of your head, feeling the feathery softness of your hair. You will wake from your nest in the crook of my arm knowing it will always be there to protect you. You will swear to eternally stand against those who would do me harm. Boy to boy. Hand to hand. We will send our love to an old man typing in the night. We will give him a smile to prop open the door in the dark, leaving a crack for the light of our hillside love – the innocence of innocents, hugging him when he fears the night.

“Don't make no sense to me,” said Danny, “but I guess if that's what it was, then that's what it was.

Less Than Kind

Caution: The following is yet another of the apparently endless ramblings that clatter around in my head. It likely has no relevance or entertainment value to anyone not living between my ears. Read on at your peril. Perhaps you are masochistic. Or you may be a fan of watching the suffering of others, a kind of “schadenfreudinista”. Who am I to judge? If you are sane, you will go on about your day and ignore the following entirely.

I was discussing cabbages and kings, the meaning of life and other things with a friend. I mentioned that I sometimes over commit the level of support I can provide to others, or rush in to “solve” others problems before they ask for help. When this occurs I can exhaust myself and end up resenting the person whom I am trying to “help” or “save”. He suggested that I write about the issue. He knows me well. Long ago I learned that writing out my thoughts often helps clarify my thinking. Even when no clarity arises, I derive comfort from the simple pleasure of seeing my thoughts materialize before me. Something about the appearance of letters on the page feels magical, as if the white emptiness creates the letters on its own...talking to me in a voice that is at once familiar and alien.

So, why do I carry the desire to be “nice” or “kind” to extremes? What do I get from it? Tough questions. It is easy to come up with facile replies like, “You do it because it makes you feel important”; “By 'helping' others you are able to ignore your own issues”; or “By 'helping' others you fill an emptiness in your life, fighting off the fear of being unloved and alone.” Perhaps all of these are true to some extent. Perhaps they are completely true. Maybe there is nothing more. I suppose, I can accept that these answers paint an accurate picture of my character, even though the the image is fairly depressing.

However, as is always the case with my magnificent magnifying mind, I must ask if there is more. All of my typical answers to my problem are linked to moral views that arise from years of fundamentalist programming. They start with the assumption that I am born in “original” sin, that I am flawed, broken, and in need of divine intervention to improve my character (if not my chances of living in eternal bliss after I die). Are there reasons for my behavior that are not rooted in a “grandiose” sense of self? I think there may very well be.

I do feel good about myself when I feel I am helping others. There is fairly sound neurological evidence for why this may be so. The mirror neurons in my brain respond to the reactions of those around me. They are what allow me to feel the pain and pleasure of others, the empathy for their point of view. Thus, if I act in a manner that creates happiness in those around me, I am more likely to feel happy myself. This view of things is less judgmental and I believe more accurate than a fundamentalist view of life. Certainly, it has more evidence to support it than the idea that my acts of kindness are derived from supernatural orgins.

I think the issue may be that like any other neurological process, the pathways that drive me to be “kind” can become overloaded. There are times when they go into overdrive. Perhaps my mirror neurons become “addicted” to the endorphins generated by seeing others become happy as a result of my efforts. Maybe this in turn drives me to try and be evermore “kind”, eventually bringing me to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. I have not yet run across the research that would allow me to verify this hypothesis. But, it offers an intriguing alternative to supernatural answers. It is a point of view that is far more helpful to me. A path that allows me to deal with my “issue” without judging myself or others as being evil or hateful. I may be confused at times, but I no longer accept the proposition that I am evil or flawed. Often I do not see things clearly. I have even felt hatred toward others and acted to harm them in many ways, and, I have received hatred and harm from others. The choice is whether I see hatred and kindness as purely metaphysical, religious or philosophical issues or whether I see them as also having a very strong physiological and neurological component. But I digress.

Regardless of the cause, the fact remains that I sometimes find myself in situations where I have multiple people expecting, (or at least I feel they are expecting), more “kindness” from me than I am capable of delivering. What to do?

First and foremost for me is to avoid judging or condemning the other person or myself. It is far better for me to recognize that a large part of the experience is perfectly natural, unpleasant perhaps, but just a natural consequence human evolution. Some people's mirror neurons likely function better than other people's, just as some people's synapses fire more quickly than the rest of the population. Perhaps my mirror neurons are more suited to long distance running with emotional issues than they are to sprinting past them, or hurdling over them. Who can say? The point is that I am not at “fault” or “sinning”. I sometimes am ill equipped to handle the level or type of “kindness” stress in which I find myself. If there is fault on my part it is for over estimating my capacity for kindness in a given situation. I am no more evil than a marathoner who runs one league too far.

Second I must be wary of situations and people that invite me to promise or try to provide more “kindness” than I can provide. This is particularly difficult for me. My long history of trying to be like “Jesus” or some other imagined level of perfectly kind being was come by honestly. Yet it can be deadly. Often I see people or situations that look risky to me and think, “that may be more than I can handle”, yet I charge ahead anyway. The pathway for reason is overridden by the programming of perfection I received early in life. I see the risk, I acknowledge that it likely will not turn out well, yet I am driven to accept the “challenge” because I want to be “more like Jesus” or I believe it is my “duty” to sacrifice myself for the good of another. Whenever I stop short, pull back, or run away from such situations I generally feel guilty, like I have failed. I have to continually inventory the facts of the situation with a trusted friend. Sometimes with several.

Third I must accept the truth of the phrase “to thine own self be true”. Sometimes when I inventory a situation with my friends I find no relief – most if not all of them disapprove of my actions. Sometimes when I talk things over with friends I hear only that I have been a bad person, that I have been evil. This can set me off on the path of self hatred that leads nowhere and benefits no one. I must accept that no matter what I do, sometimes people will think I have not performed the way I should have. At these times I have to return to the facts. Was I trying to be kind or was I intentionally trying to hurt someone? If I was intentionally trying to hurt someone then I try to make amends. If I wasn't then I must accept that sometimes many if not most of my closest friends will think poorly of me.

Finally, I have to be careful with the idea of perfection. I have come to believe that the Platonic ideal of perfection is one of the greatest lies ever created by philosophy and religion. There is no evidence for “perfection” that I know of. Everything and everyone will seem less than “perfect” depending on the measure used and the one doing the measuring. Many people standing on a riverbank watching a man trying to save a drowning child will be forever haunted by the feeling that they are less “perfect” than the man. Many, like me, will carry the image the rest of their lives, feeling guilty whenever it comes to mind. They will be unable to see the simple fact, that the man in the river represented nothing more than the confluence of a particular set of events and decisions at a given point in time. They will not understand that many of them have done, or will do similar acts of kindness (sometimes without even being aware of them).

As near as I can tell, there is no hierarchy of kindness. All acts of kindness, no matter how “small” or “large” seem to add to the general health of myself and those around me. Often the things I see as very small have the “largest” effect, and often my greatest “sacrifices” go unnoticed (which can really piss me off). The idea of perfect kindness requires me to compare myself to a lie, the lie that somehow, someone “better” than me could be kind under all conditions with all people. I know of no evidence that such a creature or being ever has or ever will exist. All the models of perfection I am aware of have “feet of clay” somewhere along the line. Jesus got pissed at moneylenders. God got so angry at humanity that he drowned his own creation in a flood. Gandhi had a self-aggrandizing and political side according to some who were closest to him. Martin Luther King apparently had lovers. Given the failings of such august company, who am I to aspire to perfect kindness?

I can try to make changes. I will make some. But I recognize that even in addressing such a minor issue as creating pain for myself by trying to be “too kind”, I will be less than perfect. Oh well. The coffee tastes good and the sun is shining.