Perhaps you found this book in the self-help section of your local bookstore. If so, there were thousands of other books there too. Go back and buy them. Tell yourself that your real agenda, whether or not you go along with the downward trajectory described by this book, is to become a better person.
Occupy yourself entirely with the arduous task of erasing your flaws. Read only self-help literature, never anything else. When you take a course, make it one about personal development. When you watch television, switch to the shows about overcoming addiction, losing weight, getting in shape, or finding your true self.
Make the overcoming of your imperfections the overriding goal of your life. Tell yourself that you will stop once you are eighty pounds lighter. Once you have fully processed your childhood traumas. Once you have six-pack abs. Once you sit in the corner office. Once your marriage is seamlessly joyful. Once you can say that every day, and in every way, you are getting better and better.
Stop, in other words, only when you are finally good enough: when you have crossed that shining threshold and have become acceptable—in your own eyes and in the eyes of everyone else. The ads, the book covers, the workshop posters—they all have pictures of these people. The flawless ones. The smiling ones with the white teeth and perfect hair. You could be one of them. Tell yourself that.
A friend of a friend once commented to me that he was en route to the chiropractor and that later that day, he had his therapy appointment. I said that I didn’t know that he was having trouble. He wasn’t; he told me: “Maintenance.” His maintenance consisted of a dozen separate appointments through the week. They kept him aloft. And in misery-inducing debt.
You have almost certainly wondered for most of your life if you were ever going to become one of those radiant, successful people on the book covers. Here’s where you find out, because I’m going to tell you.
No. You’re not.
Sorry.
The problem is that your culture doesn’t just demand tangle-free hair. It has a whole list of criteria. You have to be smart enough, informed enough, fit enough, thin enough, rich enough, wise enough, happy enough, sexy enough, popular enough, and stable enough. You must not have panic attacks, bad breath, sad mornings, hangovers, loneliness, crow’s feet, high cholesterol, debt, clutter, a straying spouse, spiritual uncertainty, shyness, a sweet tooth, thinning hair, a thickening waist, wrinkles, depression, disability, career angst, bad spelling, or body odor.
Even if you manage to meet some of these criteria, you will never—never—reach all of them, no matter how long you live. You will never be a success by the full standards of your culture. If you must be good enough by those standards in order to relax and enjoy your life, then that dream will never come to pass. Sell the hammock; you will never be able to relax in it.
In part, this troubling reality exists because it is not in the best interests of our culture for you to feel good about yourself. The economy needs to sell you products, so it needs you to see yourself as lacking. But in part, the futility of the task arises from the unbounded optimism of personal development. We can all be highly effective persons; we can all find success in ten days or less; we can all be the best we can be; we can all discover the creative genius within; we can all be president.
So keep trying. Tell yourself that you are not good enough. Find ever more areas where you are faulty and shameful. Spend your life trying to manifest excellence in your life. The hidden observer at the back of your mind will watch you. It will see the intensity of your efforts and conclude that to work so hard you must truly be as deficient as you imagine. Maybe worse.
There is one question you must never ask yourself. “If I were already good enough, what would I do then?”
If, that is, you didn’t have to make up for your inadequacy, what would you do with your life? If you did not have to paper over your faults, what would you read? What films would you see? What courses would you take? Where would you go? Having become fully capable, what would you use that capacity for? Where would you make your contribution?
If you ask questions like these, all your work on the misery project might come undone. You might begin living your life, rather than preparing for it, and you might discover that that alone can sustain you, elevate your mood, and destroy the cynicism and unhappiness you have worked so hard to create.
So go back to the bookstore. Did all those books about how to become good enough seem aimed in a happier direction than this one? Not at all. Get into therapy. Better yet, get into three different kinds at once. Focus on becoming what no one, not even the models in those photographs, can be: good enough. On all levels.
It’s not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, after all. It’s you.
Chase it.