Tag: behavior

Better Than Perfect

If there’s one aspect of our collective behavior that will continually baffle me, it’s the relentless quest for perfection. It makes us act in strange ways, waste money on trivial things and cast shade on significant moments of achievement, due to the presence of minor flaws.

Perfection is fleeting. It’s tantalizing. Sportscasters wax poetic about it, Lexus bombards us with car commercials about the pursuit of it, brides spend the months leading up to their big day obsessing over it.

Perfection is seemingly all around us, yet barely out of our reach.

But why do we strain for that escaped balloon, time after time? What is it about perfection that makes us fixate on it, like a diamond under the glass in a jewelry store?

Is it because perfection puts us on God’s level? We should know better. Both the Bible and Greek mythology contain cautionary tales about those who had the Hubris to ascend to where they did not belong. When Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wax wings melted and he plummeted back to Earth. When people teamed up to build a tower to Heaven, God foiled the plan by splitting up the languages of the conspirators, making collaboration impossible.

What about the prospect of living without blemishes? Is that what allows our hearts to fix on perfection? This thinking is foolish, shallow and arrogant. Blemishes and flaws allow us to be different, what allow us to be free. We are not carbon copies, devoid of any sign of character. We are humans, with unique personalities, looks and behaviors. “Blemishes” may represent deviation from a mean, but they also help us connect, learn and grow.

Yes, if we are to progress as a society, we must learn to embrace our imperfections, instead of relentlessly chasing perfection. But that doesn’t mean we must stop seeking a better way, a higher standard.

We must aim for ideal. Ideal is attainable; perfection never will be.

Think about it. Did the humbling experiences of the falls of Icarus and Babel cause us to stop building or innovating? Not by a longshot. Look up on a bright sunny day in the big city, and you’ll likely see airplanes soaring well above the peaks of skyscrapers. These innovations are below the level of perfection, yet above the standard of adequacy. To a certain degree, they’re ideal.

Along the path to ideal, we learn to live with our differences, our blemishes, our flaws and imperfections. We collaborate, grow and build a more nuanced culture. Some of us even learn how to speak the languages of others — breaking through the barrier of Babel. If perfection were attainable, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to improve our society in these mutually productive ways.

So strive for ideal. It’s better than perfect.

FOMO Is Dumb

If there’s one emotional trigger that’s all over pop culture these days, it’s FOMO (or Fear of Missing Out). In a Millennial culture dominated by the process of stacking up personal experiences as much as possible, the event is everything — and missing out on it constitutes a crushing blow that necessitates emotional CPR.

This sentiment has taken hold from coast to coast. It’s why events ranging from South by Southwest to the latest iPhone release have a ridiculous amount of in-person interest. It’s why live streaming has gone from a novel idea to something that invades all corners of our life within a four-year period. It’s why we get so many marketing emails warning us that the clock is ticking on the next big thing. In short, it’s the fuel for the way our culture currently operates.

But FOMO is Dumb.

This phenomenon has invaded our society like a cancer. It’s brought the peer-pressured environment of high school into the mainstream, playing on our sense of belonging at the expense of what really should be important.

Much like the proliferation of selfies, FOMO gives us a mainstream excuse for carrying on childish behavior at an age when we should be much more mature. While selfies satiate our ever-growing narcissism, FOMO plays into our teenage desire to be “cool.”

This misguided emotional trap leads to predictably ugly results. We act irresponsibly, overspending both our time and our money to continually be present on the social scene. This means big business for organizers who can play off our addiction to routinely fill to capacity everything from an arena to a bar, solely off of the mystical social status that attendance at these events provides.

Of course, half of the people present for these events and activities don’t much care about them at all — they’re just on the scene so that the world knows they were there.

This is ridiculous.

It’s high time we take control of our own destiny. Our lives should be about more than where we’re visible at. It’s not like anyone is keeping score anyway — at least not in a way that really matters.

We should instead devote our attention to what we’re passionate about, and the people that mean the most to us.  If we shift our gaze in this direction, we’ll attain necessary balance in our lives.

In fact, we’ll find that we’re not missing anything at all.