The flawed and the woozy

I haven’t been feeling particularly great the last few days. I got my summer cold, (what I call an air-conditioning cold) a few weeks ago while hanging out with the Norwegians. Nothing fierce, just the usual coming and going of a head and chest cold. The last few days, it’s felt like a feverish cold. I’ve been able to get up and go about my work day, but when it’s over I’m hot, or cold, or chilled, or my eyes won’t stay open. A couple nights in a row I’ve felt my own head more than a few times. While it didn’t feel particularly hot, I noticed that my body did. I mainly ached. No major sore throat or anything else, just one of those fevers (possibly) that will put you in a certain mood. You might feel a little as if the ground shifts beneath your feet now and again, or that you’re seeing things out of the corner of your eye. I am definitely a big baby when it comes to pain, but this hasn’t been about that, and so has actually felt mildly interesting.

This morning, after spending two nights passing up dinner for bed, I got up as usual to come out to the cabin, debated, took a bath first, and then came because, I thought, ‘It always makes me feel better.’ I wouldn’t ordinarily put it that way, but when I got here I knew it was the comforting thing to do even if it might seem to make more sense to stay in bed.

I can’t tell you exactly why, (maybe my body not being quite “right”) but it got me in the mood of thinking about all things flawed. I’ve been seeing it everywhere lately…people (well, writers anyway), admitting to the flawed nature of human beings in all kinds of different ways. I blogged about the “perfectly flawed” nature of baseball (one of the first places I saw the theme developing came from baseball talk). Then there was this great editorial about the change in the media in the last 50 years. The old assumption, it said, was that people were flawed and reporters looked the other way as much as they could. The flaws weren’t the most important thing – and didn’t always prevent good leadership, or skill, or heroics. Then I saw “the flaw” in a couple of articles spurred by the 75th anniversary of the founding of AA. Then in a You Tube video. All in that haphazard way that gets called synchronicity.

It felt like seeing that we’ve traveled from an assumption that human beings are inherently flawed and that their greatest acts are acts of overcoming, to an assumption that “we should not be flawed.”

It’s what I was feeling when I wrote The Given Self. Damn. Who said that perfection was in reach? That we can all be above reproach, never make mistakes, never show any weakness? Always be smart? Or centered? Or healthy?

So it all got me thinking about AA, and how I’ve kind of liked the model and wondered if it wouldn’t translate into other areas where people meet around the idea of change. What Bill Wilson did wasn’t to zero in on drinking. He accepted the weakness, flaws, and fragility of the human person and, by working from that admission and surrender to a higher power, sought a change in identity that came from the very core.

AA is not always successful. No one can figure out why it is for some and not for others. No one can map human traits out on a grid and predict anything with certainty. We’re too complex as people, and our circumstances and situations hold another layer of complexity. Even so, AA, as flawed as it is, is a good thing.

Another thinker (whose video was sent to me by a friend) spoke of a new human narrative of empathy, stating that empathy is not needed in a utopia. It makes you wonder if this quest for perfection isn’t behind all kinds of ills. In the utopian mindset… “It’s a beautiful world, all is perfect”… what need is there for empathy? A human narrative of empathy accepts the fragility of human life and the non-utopian nature of living.

What rises out of such ideas is an acknowledgement that there is no straight path, and that there’s a tyranny that comes of the idea that you can do everything “right” and, when you do, then everything will turn out great: you won’t get sick, or lose your job, or your mate; you won’t fail, or if you do, you won’t be crabby about it.

The whole question of why bad things happen to good people is natural and poignant but arrogant too. It arises out of the idea of it being possible to be perfect (or at least to define and manage being “good”).

Maybe this tyranny is why you can get the feeling that, “The imperfect need not apply,” and that it doesn’t only reference the job market. And maybe releasing this tyranny is about the healthiest and most “good” thing we can do. But I’m not sure. I’m still a little woozy.