|
flawed leaders
I like to think my dad is flawless. He's a doctor, but he's also a handyman and a mechanic, a ski patrolman and a sailor - a modern-day renaissance guy with more practical sense than anyone else I've met. He has more letters after his name than I can remember, and though I'm a physics major and he only took the required pre-med classes, he understands the principles much better than I do. But when it comes to computers, he's pretty hopeless. As a computer science student and general techno-geek, I like showing my friends how to do stuff on computers. But with my dad it's different. I get annoyed when he asks for help using spreadsheets, short-tempered when he wanted advice buying a laptop, and unnervingly frustrated when he had trouble with email attachments. I've spent weeks training my grandfather to use AOL, but can't spend more than five minutes tutoring my dad.
To give a half-baked psychoanalysis of myself, I think my peevishness comes largely from an inability to deal with my dad's ignorance. I'm not used to having him turn to me for help, and his admission of weakness (however unimportant) doesn't mesh with the idealized version I've created. With my dad, as with other leaders and role models, I unconsciously seek flawlessness. My idealized leaders don't acknowledge their mistakes; they simply don't make them. Of course, I wholeheartedly respect and admire people when they are straightforward about their shortcomings, but in the back of my mind such penance doesn't inspire faith or trust.
This absurd logic is deeply ingrained in the way I think - I can't dissociate the connotation of 'bad' from my conception of 'flawed.' To make matters worse, I apply this warped standard to myself as well. Unfortunately, when the ideal of flawlessness meets the reality of my flaws, I end up trying to cover them up. Over the last 20-odd years, I've learned that, when I drop the ball, other people don't have to see it hit the ground. I've honed my ability to distract, digress, and divert attention from errors to incidental information. But these are unenviable talents. Am I the only one distressed by my ever-increasing ability to sidestep and gloss over my own mistakes? Striving for perfection is not intrinsically bad, but it's an incomplete ambition.
The problem is, that despite any cognizance I have of the evils of this mentality, I can't seem to lose it. I was going to end this essay with the following paragraph:
Theoretically, weakness could be a springboard to empowerment. Public figures rarely apoligize or otherwise acknowledge their own fallability, but such a confident and human act might be inspiring and compelling. More likely, however, is the possibility that it would be manipulated and thrown in the face of the confessor. My dad, who made no bones about his own inscience, was received with exasperation. Maybe next time I'll thank him instead.
Nice and tidy, and more appropriate than I could have hoped. See, what I did was to reconstrue my dad's 'flaw' as a strength, thus recovering the idealized (read 'flawless') version I can't seem to relinquish. Again, I'm aware of what I'm doing, but can't stop doing it. These issues are thick and subtle. Why can't the flaw stand as such, unmolested and straight? Maybe if I write enough about the problem, I'll actually internalize what I'm preaching...
Posted by senorjosh at April 26, 2003 03:37 PM
I think it's natural at our age to grapple with questions of flaws. As twentysomethings, we're at a point in our lives where we are structureless (we graduated from the thing that structured our lives for 17+- years) and authorityless -- parents lose their grip, and bosses mean little when everything is, often, so transitory. We experience the absolute terror of absolute (mostly) freedom. And thus in dealing with our own autonomity and therefore our own culpability, we fear imperfection.
For example, I started to find myself altering and morphing my erroneous answers to questions into defenses of how "that's not what I meant," or how wrongness is only a matter of the precision of the question. It's sinister; the good part is knowing that you're doing it. Flaws tie in with vulnerability, and at times vulnerability is insufferable. I think the thing you (Josh) are doing here is grappling with your dad's vulnerability, especially since you're bent on fortressing your own. But being wrong or flawed is not weak; oftentimes it's endearing, even attractive. When your life becomes more directed, when you start to develop a rhythm and a confidence to your self-direction, when things are less transitory, I think you'll find your dad's flaws not only tolerable, but even...cute?
Which is not to say I'm there yet at all. My mom drives me nuts!
Posted by: Elise at August 18, 2003 11:09 PM
|
|
