All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
In the world of clichés, certainly “the glass is half full (or empty) must at least rank in the Top Ten. But like all clichés, there is a fundamental wisdom within that this newsletter seeks to examine via a noted American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
In Hawthorne’s short story, “The Birth-Mark,” Aylmer is devoted to his beautiful wife, Georgiana. But he is also consumed with a desire to eliminate what he perceives to be his wife’s only physical imperfection, a small birthmark on her cheek. A man of science (at least to the extent possible in the middle of the 19th century), Aylmer endeavors to remove the hated flaw from his wife’s cheek. For her part, Georgiana acquiesces to her husband’s request as she submits to his potions and experiments to erase the mar from her cheek. Tragically, Georgiana comes to see the flattering mark as grotesque rather than enhancing. In the story’s sad conclusion, Aylmer succeeds in making the mark fade as his wife expires.
Like Aylmer, we all may fall victim to the tendency to focus on what is missing at the expense of what is there. We may be prone to be self-critical by measuring our shortcomings against another’s strengths. A man may envy another man’s financial success while overlooking or taking for granted the blessings of his family, his health and the fulfillment he receives from his job. Those of us who suffer with northern winter and snow gaze enviously southward. We see the sun, but conveniently ignore the cockroaches.
But the tendency to seek perfection when it comes to our partner is even worse than the injustice we self inflict. It robs us of happiness and unfairly denigrates our presumed loved one. In the Hawthorne tale, Aylmer’s fatal (for Georgiana) flaw was the pursuit of perfection. He was more in love with the irrational belief in, and desire for, flawlessness than in his selfless wife. He literally found the pimple on the complexion of near perfection.
So whose beauty (or talent, or virtue or devotion) are you looking past in your quest for the elusive ideal? What do you ignore about your own positives as you search the metaphorical mirror for traces of your own shortcomings?
Homework: Give up your inclination to overlook your own good qualities as well as the positives of those around you. To paraphrase another old cliché, the grass is probably greenest under your own feet.
We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. -Saluja