Opus 2026-192: Utopian Carrots

Welcome to the trap of life. I refer to the way in which we begin to compare our situation to our dreams. We compare reality to Utopia and find utopia unreachable. Can you remember playing something like cowboys and Indians based on some grade B westerns you had been watching or a weekly TV show? Have you ever daydreamed about being the gunfighter that cleans up a town? That is all good fun until you actually have to go out and saddle a horse.

Too often we look at things like national politics, our city council or our church pot luck based on the expectations of utopia. Can you believe what the president just did? You ignore the twenty things he did that pleased you and suddenly he is a pariah because he violated your expectations. He may have even been wrong, but his major flaw was he did not do it your way. Or how about that total barbarian that puts beans in his chili? Can you imagine such a thing?

We fall into the trap of chasing perfection that not only does not exist, but cannot exist. It is like chasing a carrot on a stick. We know what we want. We can see it. We can taste it. It is always just out of reach and we never realize it is made of plastic.

We strive to be like our idols. That is also a trap. Part of that is because we don’t know what our idols are really like. I enjoy talking to young girls who are in love with Mr. Darcy. I point out to them that in real life he smells like a horse and believes that taking baths is unhealthy. He also likes kidney pie. Or the young man who falls in love with a movie star that he has never seen without her makeup. He doesn’t realize that she is 35 and not 18 and can’t hold a conversation with anything but the wall.

We often live in a fantasy world. We have a friend who shared that she was considered a great beauty in New England. We all laughed because although she was attractive enough we would never have thought of her that way. If she had accepted their judgment she would have been impossible to live with.

I have no problem with striving for utopia. The real problem is when we think we are close to achieving it. Life doesn’t work that way.

homo unius libri