This is http://www.essayz.com/a9106071.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %BEING PERFECTLY YOURSELF HEALTHY IMPERFECT WORLD 910607 It is a great strain to constantly try to pretend to be somebody other than yourself. Attempting such a pretense involves constantly fabricating a web of dishonest representations of yourself, to make others perceive you to be coherently other than you really are. Coherent dishonesty is impossible to achieve, and attempting to achieve coherent dishonesty is a great strain. We cannot perfectly be other than who we really are. The 120 pound man cannot pretend to be the perfect football tackler. The tone-deaf person cannot pretend to be the perfect violinist. The homosexual cannot pretend to be the perfect heterosexual lover. Perfection involves coherence, integrity and honesty. We cannot be perfectly anybody other than whom we really are. It is disintegrative to try to pretend to be other than the person whom we really are. Often we find ourselves in situations in which other people invite, encourage and/or try to force us into pretending to be other than we really are. Many communities are conformal communities, trying to make square members of the community fit into round holes, and trying to make round members of the community fit into square holes. Because the essence of evil is alienation, trying to make person pretend to be other than the person they really are is evil behavior; such behavior leads inevitably to alienation. To be persons of integrity in communities of integrity we need to work to be perfectly ourselves with honesty and integrity, come what may. It is futile to seek perfection in dishonest conformity. Yet, it is often hard to seek perfection in honestly being our true selves; for honesty often is very disturbing to dishonest people who are trying to perfect themselves through futile mis-representations of themselves. We cannot eliminate all distortions of the truth. Other people often want to deceive themselves, and we cannot prevent all such self deception. Other people may want to deceive themselves about what kind of person we are, and we cannot prevent all such self deception. Other people will make assumptions about us which are not true; we cannot prevent their making false assumptions about us. Yet, there is nothing which requires us to help other people deceive themselves; to be active participants in their collusive games of mutual self deception. We cannot prevent other people from participating in collusive games of mutual self deception, but we do not have to become active participants in other people's collusive games of mutual self deception. To be people of integrity in communities of integrity, we need to work to avoid getting involved in collusive games of mutual self deception; for it is not easy to stay out of such dishonest games. To be perfectly our selves we need to seek to live our lives in contexts in which we are free to be our true selves with perfect freedom to be honest. We must seek to discover and create such contexts within which we and others can be perfectly our true selves. We are confused and lost when we are trying to perfect ourselves through conformity to images of us which are not consistent with our true selves. Such conformity is dishonest, disintegrative and is evil because it inevitably leads to alienation which is the essence of evil. To avoid being so confused and lost we need to work on perfecting our images of what it means to be perfect. If our image of perfection involves dishonest conformity, we are doomed to failure in our efforts to achieve perfection, and will live our lives in the hell of personal and communal disintegration. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================