Death to Perfection

So here in Vermont my grandma has a lot of novels, and because I am a fast reader I like to scour the shelves in the morning for a book and finish it within the day. Today’s is Stained Glass by William F. Buckley, and it is pretty good and I am halfway through it, but it is pissing me off.

Tt is a spy novel set in the ’50s so it features both spies and aristocrats, the two very most annoying types of people to make fictional characters out of. Why? Because they’re perfect. They are fluent in many languages. They are educated at the very best universities and excel academically, socially, romantically. They have all sorts of hobbies and interests at which they are experts. They are jacks of all trades except for those they are masters of. they have no weaknesses. It is extremely lame to feel jealous of a person who doesn’t even exist.

I have never met such a person who is truly good at everything without some sort of cost. A lot of smart people are not very well-adjusted and a lot of educated, accomplished people are insufferably arrogant. But I can’t help but think that’s true only because I’ve never been to Europe. Maybe that’s where all the perfect people are?

It annoys me that by pure chance I was not born into circumstances where it was likely that I would learn concertos as a teenager or end up at the Sorbonne, especially since I know I could. This is mitigated by the fact that I don’t want to learn a concerto or go to school abroad, but then again, I might if I had been raised in an environment more hospitable to lofty ambition.

The big challenge here is one that has always been an insecurity of mine – appreciating what really kicks ass after cutting away cultural indoctrination. There are people my age who are far more successful than me, but in whose eyes?  I can do most everything pretty well, with the caveat that it takes me a long time to care enough to do them. Why do I minimize myself by analyzing my life against the pace of others? And if I don’t, is that a copout, because I am modifying my perception of value to include what I feel I offer?

That’s another thing that pisses me off – you know how Gandhi (I think) said “be the change you want to see in the world” and people will put that in their Facebook quotes section so they seem ambitious? I hate the imperative tone, the implication that awesomeness is reserved for the future, a pie in the sky beyond the grasp of any regular people. I am the change I want to see in the world. I am fine even though I am not a 4.0 Ivy League prat (though admittedly I could have been) and I have never been on TV. Instead of Gandhi I would order people to change the world to what you see in yourself. That is why I think Fear.less is great, because it helps people. Because I feel that the purpose of life is to help others and cover their weaknesses, I can’t stand specious “success” that is of no benefit and doesn’t uplift, I can’t stand arbitrary achievement for achievement’s sake and I can’t stand people who have no weaknesses. Well, I wouldn’t if I met one.

Also I find myself terribly compelled to write a book, though I don’t know what it would be about yet. The reason for this is twofold. One, William F. Buckley is a good writer and so my appreciation for the craft is currently blazing.  Two, perfect characters are so damn annoying and I would subvert this by populating my pages with deeply-flawed people.