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Accepting Success
If my aim is to prove I am “enough,” the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was
already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.
—Nathaniel Branden
T
he Greek myth of Sisyphus tells of a man, the most cunning of mortals, who was punished for his pride and disobedience.Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a heavy rock up a mountainside and then watch it roll down again, repeating this process for eternity.
Psychologically speaking, the Perfectionist is like Sisyphus. But whereas the punishment of Sisyphus was inflicted by the gods, the Perfectionist’s punishment is self-inflicted. No success or con-quest, no peak or destination, is ever enough to satisfy the Perfec-tionist. When he reaches the summit of one mountain or another, when he achieves some form of success, there is no delight, no savoring—only another meaningless journey toward a destination that inevitably disappoints.
Te alternative to the Sisyphean archetype is Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who, according to Homer, fought in the war of the Greeks
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The Perfectionist The Optimalist
Figure .
against roy. After the war was won he wanted to return home to his family and people, but his journey was impeded by Posei-don, the god of the sea. Odysseus struggled against the one-eyed Cyclops, barely escaped the giant man-eating Laestrygonians, and survived the song of the sirens. He was the guest of the enchant-ress Circe and spent seven years as the captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso. And at the end of his long journey, which was full of despair and delight, gloom and glory, he finally reached home and was reunited with his beloved wife, Penelope.
In psychological terms, Odysseus is an Optimalist. Life is fraught with struggles, diffi culties, and disappointments, but the Optimalist is able to find pleasure in the journey without losing his focus on his destination. He learns and grows from adversity, and while he may keep his eye on his eventual goal (in Odysseus’s case, returning home), he also savors and takes pleasure in his adventures. And when the Optimalist is rewarded for his struggles, he is fulfilled and grateful—and does not take his success for granted, does not dismiss his accomplishment as insignificant.
Te reality that the Perfectionist expects (and therefore creates for himself) is of a Sisyphean battle, a futile struggle. By contrast, the Optimalist’s life is an Odyssean epic, a purposeful adventure.
Accepting Success ●•
In his essay on the myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus tries to rescue Sisyphus—and with him all those who perceive their lives as futile and hopeless labor—from his predicament. Camus describes Sisyphus as a tortured, passionate, and absurd hero. But he nevertheless ends his essay on an optimistic and somewhat romantic note:
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the
higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. Tis universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.
Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that
night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. Te strug-gle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s
heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
But can one really imagine Sisyphus happy? Could anyone—
other than in literary, poetic moments as Camus, no doubt, found himself in while writing his essay—ever truly invoke Sisyphus’s predicament as something romantic and appealing? I doubt it. Sisyphus is not a happy man. Instead, I would suggest, that Camus’ writing better describes another Greek hero: one can cer-tainly imagine Odysseus happy.
Sisyphus suffers inordinate pain throughout his journey; Odys-seus, too, struggles, but there are moments of joy and delight and learning and growing. When Sisyphus reaches the peak, he is greeted by the bane of his existence; Odysseus at the end of his travels is greeted by the love of his life.
Alasdaire Clayre, the successful Oxford scholar who commit-ted suicide at the age of forty-eight, was a consummate Perfec-tionist. Tough most other people saw Clayre as an astounding
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success, he saw himself as a failure. A Perfectionist, like Clayre, rejects success, banishes it from his life, either before it is attained by setting excessively high standards or after it is attained by fail-ing to appreciate it. In other words, the Perfectionist either pre-cludes success from the outset by attempting a slope that is too steep or dismisses success once it is achieved by rolling the rock back down. Te Optimalist, in contrast, attracts success to his life, first by adopting ambitious yet grounded standards for suc-cess (a steep and challenging slope, yet one that can be managed), and second by appreciating success once it is achieved (celebrating and savoring the arrival). It is these two issues—of grounding success and appreciating success—that distinguish between life as a Sisyphean battle and life as an exciting odyssey.