The Perfect Deception

The perfect deception is the deception of perfection. It's the most convincing distraction from joy, the widest path to fear and the quickest way to die. I'm giving it up. I'm going to let the "perfect me" go for the privilege of meeting and enjoying a relationship with the real me. She's who I've been searching for. She's who I admire. She's the champ and the one worth living with. The dramatic scifi film, Gattaca, depicts the dual hatred of both the perfect facade and the most imperfect true self. The hatred of being invalidated for what is imperfect and being filled with hate for the prison of perfectionism. The hero, Vincent, achieves his dream by collaborating with a genetically perfect, but broken, Jerome. Jerome dwindles from the arrogance an elitism to a resigned suicidal victim of his own identity. While Vincent, the in-valid finds love, success and freedom from stigma, Jerome is burned away by the very furnace that once protected Vincent from identity exposure. What is it about perfection that gets us so blinded and hooked that we become its slave? Is success something to be scorned? Do we not envy, idolize and admire those who go before us in the pursuit of greatness? Where is the breakdown? Where does healthy turn to destructive and how can I stay in the most ideal state of idealism? It's something to do with the self. The finding of the real self and the relinquishing of the self that one thought was the real self. The stripping off of the defenses that hide the pure child beneath and then treating the child with the care every child should be given from the beginning and on into eternity. But we fear the child. We fear hating our truest self and being left with no facade to buffer the despair. At least a lie can keep us alive for a while. Like consciousness altering drugs we are kept from facing the reality that might kill us and might set us free. I faced her. The real me. She was feirsome to behold. She was more frightened than frightening and more loving than lovable. She almost killed me trying to get free and now that I love her, there is nothing left to fear. But just as Vincent could not reach his dream without the benevolence of Jerome and another who knew his true identity, I would not have made it here without my facades and my Savior. They both saved me, but only One gave me True Life.