The Illusion of Completeness

This is what we all are; an illusion of completeness. Maybe not all the time, and maybe not even consciously, but I feel certain that we all have projected that image at one point in time. If you are reading this thinking, "No I have surely never done that before" I ask you to think back to your time in middle school.. ah-ha.. "Yes it would appear that I have, indeed, done that before."

I saw a quote once that went something like "We are unsatisfied with our lives because we constantly compare our 'behind-the-scenes' footage with everyone else's 'highlight reel.'" Is that not the truth? Particularly this day in age when we have all these social media networks in which people post only the pictures in which they look like models and comment only about the good things that happen in their lives, "Got an 'A' on my midterm #collegelife #thatdailygrind #killinit" and hide the bad things, "Did I mention I'm hugely in debt from student loans and failing all my other classes?"

This sort of limited exposure to others makes it easy for us to look at our own lives and think we are less appealing or boring or failing or whatever else in comparison to others, but the funny thing is: look at those people whose lives you imagine to be perfect. Do you feel close to them? Or do you feel distanced by the lack of connection? Let me give an example from my own life:

I am a junior in high school and new to the rock climbing scene. I am at the gym with a friend who has been climbing his whole life, and as we take turns climbing I say things like, "Man those inverted sections are really hard for me" or "It is hard to clip in on that route since I never feel like I'm balanced enough to take a hand off the wall." His response to these is to say "Oh I think the overhanging stuff is easy" and "Really? I don't think it's that hard." 

In doing this, he paints himself as the complete climber and makes it difficult for me to relate to him. Of course he does not need to lie and say that he thinks those things are difficult as well, but he surely went through the process of learning and training as well at one point.

Today in class we talked about how everyone is dealt a hand in life, and how those who are dealt a poor hand have no choice but to bluff if they want to stay in the game. If the other option is to fold, then I of course would encourage people to bluff. But at the same time, why is that the only option? Why can't we just look at someone with a shitty hand and accept them anyway? What is completeness and how can we possibly ever define it since we can't possibly know everything?

When I think about this I think of our brief discussion of Dumbo. The small elephant with huge ears is given a feather and told it will enable him to fly, so he places his trust in that feather and thereby flies. In Space Jam it is  a "potion" (just a drink that the team is told is a potion) that enables the team to play better. Yet when these characters go without their magical aids, they discover they were capable of accomplishing those feats all along; by being "incomplete" they found success.

The last note I want to make on this topic concerns the Magus quote, "You are still becoming. Not being" (112) and the Hillman quote Dr. Sexson mentioned in class, "The thing you can become is what you already are." We want to be complete (whatever it is that means). We want to be happy, and we want to know everything. But the fact of the matter is: we are always changing, we cannot be happy 100% of the time, and we are ignorant. And as soon as we realize and accept this, we start down the path towards "being" - that is: being what we were all along.