Perfection and death

December 16, 2018



So, the other day, I was thinking about my own aspirations and ambitions. Not just the ones I’ve got at the moment, but the ones I’ve had at various times over the course of my life.

Some of them I’ve realized. I successfully married and have been, well, I think, a passable if not perfect husband. I think I’ve been an acceptable father. And so on.

There are, of course, though, things which I have not achieved, and which, frankly, I never will. For example, when I was single I was not as sexually successful as I would have hoped. I was never athletic, nor tall and commanding. I was never a business success, nor have I won fame and fortune.

Naturally, I regret my failure to achieve these things. Indeed, my sense of self-worth has suffered because of it.

And yet, as I was thinking about it the other day, I was struck by how my aspirations were at variance with my identity. At its simplest, I cannot be taller and stronger without fundamentally and forever altering my appearance. And, then, on a deeper level, I couldn’t be a business titan, say, a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg, without changing my interests and talents. I would have to be somehow fascinated by profit and loss, and competition in market—things which, at the moment, don’t appeal to me at all.

In fact, I wonder if, to achieve all of that, I’d have to be another person entirely—someone else, in effect. Someone who wasn’t Michael Jay Tucker. Maybe, indeed, someone I didn’t like particularly.

All of which is to say, well, I wonder about ambitions. Oh, they’re good and important to have. I value them in myself and in others.

But I fear, too, that if indulged too much…

They tend toward a kind of annihilation…a murder of self…

Akin to suicide, and oblivion.