Dangerous Perfectionism

While looking through old writings of mine, I recently came across this piece I had written last year. The Lizzie here is so familiar, yet so distant. I have been pulled out of the hole of despair into the sunlight of peace, but I keep looking back to draw understanding from the groove in the dirt where I had once paced. I hope you enjoy this piece, dear reader:

The universal shadow, dangerous perfectionism, torments me. I lie in a heap of regret and discontent, laying my shortcomings bare. Every endeavor that I know could have been better haunts me; even if it was profitable, such was a bittersweet victory. I feel like Sisyphus, ever rolling my boulder up the hill, with nothing to show for my efforts and continually growing more weary. I cannot keep myself from falling short of what I know I should be. I stare at the page and inside me swells a frustration by which I am wholly consumed.

I know this is humanity’s lot. We are cursed to struggle with ourselves, desiring blissful ignorance - a personalized utopia where you are always right, always the best, always succeeding, always at rest - over brutal existence. You know improvement and benefit is only won through failure and sacrifice. No progress can be made without effort and loss. Mistakes must be made, and they will be your fault, and you will hate yourself for it. The only truly happy man is a narcissist, so enveloped in their own delusion that, for but a moment, they can accept themselves joyfully.

Why make any movement then? There will be hardship and weariness - yet, humanity has struck on throughout history. You are here, today, reading this. Why? What keeps the rivers running, the clocks ticking, the human mind striving? We despise ourselves; why would we perpetually live? We have the knowledge that there is a Good, and that we are Evil. Nonetheless, the human spirit persists stubbornly. We march towards our deaths while screaming in our heads, somehow standing tall and baring our teeth, challenging and taunting life itself by wearing a badge of happiness amidst the shadows. There is something terrifyingly beautiful in the resilience of mankind.