Seeking Perfection

For John, BLUF:  With humans here is no perfection.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

This NYT item, by Mr Alain de Bottonmay, is from 28 May of last year, but showed up on the Old Gray Lady's website today.  It may be old, but it is evergreen.

Here is the lede plus one:

IT’S one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it.  And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person.

Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others.  We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.  In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be:  “And how are you crazy?”

And here is the last paragraph:

Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy.  It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.  We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not “normal.”  We should learn to accommodate ourselves to “wrongness,” striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners.

Someone, a few decades back, convinced me that there is a difference between love and infatuation and that "Love is a decision".  Well, maybe commitment is a better word, but the fact is that one elects to love someone and dedicate oneself to that person and that person's well being.  They aren't perfect, but then neither am I.

Regards  —  Cliff