A post has been brewing in my head, the thought may be incomplete but this is my best understanding of it:
- The fallacy of perfectionism
- You have a house, now what
You have a house. It’s cozy. Nice neighborhood. Nice backyard. Maybe close to the ocean. Nice schools. Now what? Maybe you’re wealthy. It’s a big house. Great views. A pool. Now what? You’re not just there, but you’re there _every day_. The newness fades and it’s just everyday to you. What do you do? What do the wealthy do, with all their riches?
I think it’s real that all those wealthy investor people turn back to investing, because once they make the purchase they get bored, and their overreliance on the chanse to feel feelings, i.e. dopamine adrenaline, kicks in and they turn back to it. Jeremy Grantham was working until he died, I think? At least it seems like Warren Buffett is still working. Who knows.
All I know is that this pursuit I’ve had in mind, this pursuit of a nice home, of a nice neighborhood, of a nice whatever, good schools, whatever. Once I get it, then what? What do I do with myself?
A home is good for housing a family. And it’s the family, that’s what. It’s not the home. The home is a means to an end. A home is only cozy if there are people there to experience the coziness.
See where I’m going with this? I’m pursuing an image of a life that I want, not the actual life. I think, oh, I want a house. I don’t want a house. I want a family. I want a partner, and people to care for, and a space to share. And it doesn’t matter how nice it is. I’ll make it nice, wherever it is. Bit by bit, I’ll make it nicer and nicer. I can renovate. It doesn’t matter if the schools aren’t top notch.
What am I doing with myself, all this time? All this focus on image, it’s no wonder I’ve been thinking about getting a VR headset. But I know the feeling, the feeling that what I’m experiencing is empty. At least when I watch youtube videos of famous people’s mansions I know what I’m looking at is real somewhere, but in VR I’m looking at a world I can’t touch, a world pulled over my eyes an empty world with no substance behind it. Walls with nothing behind them. A ground with nothing beneath it. A sky with nothing beyond it.
Gets me to my next point. The fallacy of perfectionism. I have this thought, that I can only get X if A B C D are all satisfied. I can only be happy if I make a perfect life for myself. If only, I get all of it. Until then, well I’ll focus one by one on A B C and D. This came up with formal verification. I can only use software that is proven to be correct. But what am I trying to use the software for? I can still do that, even if the software is incomplete, buggy, incorrect. How about, I use the software for that purpose, and for a minute I ignore how terrible the software is? Was that so bad?
I think I wrote about this before, but I’ll reiterate: the closer to perfect, the more painful imperfection is. Because the closer I get, the more it hurts that I’m so close but not quite there. Because perfect isn’t quite attainable, at least not in this life. And I think that the desire for perfection could probably be classified as some kind of OCD-like mental disorder. The more it consumes ones mind the more it tears it apart, because imperfection is found at every turn in this life. Best we can do is get accustomed to imperfection, but lest we become nihilists, we can still work on improving whatever corner of our lives we’ve set our focus on. Too large an effort and the task becomes intractable, causes frustration, burnout, and at worst, insanity. Too small an effort and we become bored, lacking purpose, and at worst depressed.
Here’s a picture:
I’ll finish with this last thought. Let me do what I naturally do. Let me live, let my mind wander and explore and think about interesting things, let me work on my side project, my passion projects, let me live. Just as in that picture, I don’t need my life to be perfect in order to work on that stuff. And to my first point, what do I do once I have all that stuff? I let my real life begin. I do the things that I wanted to do that whole time. Work on the real work. But here’s the kicker: I don’t need all that stuff to do it. With or without luxuries, wealth, a house, the life I want for myself eventually, with or without it I can live my life, because I can be me, because the best things in life are free, because I like to think and work on neat research projects.