In the end, obsessiveness and perfectionism are mere stand-ins, or metaphors, less so symbolizing the chase for external success and more so implying an escape from vulnerability.
In the final episode of The Dark Wizard, Dean Potter, notable free soloist and inventor of the extreme sport FreeBASE, revealed: “Transcending human limitations is kind of what I’m obsessed with in life. And I’m obsessed in this kind of flashy way where I fly. But I see that maybe I can take that and transcend the main things that matter—hate, jealousy, insecurities, all the negative things that pull you down in life. Maybe now I’m thinking about flying, but it’s just a metaphor to bring me somewhere else.”
Perfectionism isn’t about perfection at all—it’s about something else. In the series, it’s revealed that Dean’s moods fluctuate abruptly, indicating perhaps a form of bipolar disorder. Much of his fear of vulnerability seems to stem from his awareness of how vulnerable he is.
Perfectionism entails a high degree of sensitivity to one’s environment, with perhaps a bi-directional connection; it may be that perfectionism is both a source of distress when you believe you’re criticized or rejected and a way to cope with it (it may hurt you to feel imperfect but you could simultaneously feel hopeful in achieving perfection). With that said, Dean, as many of us, structured his life in a way that attempted to minimize the distress.
Individuals who profoundly struggle with mental illness, whether bipolar disorder, depression, or another form, may tell you they fear their vulnerability so much because when sadness sucks you in, you fear it may never let you out. While on the surface, they may understand what the diagnosis entails (essentially its cyclical nature), on a more primitive level, the one full of distorted thinking patterns, there’s a foreboding anticipation of ceaseless suffering. There’s a feeling of life just waiting for that one moment of weakness to drag you to hades, an underworld from which there’s no escape. So, while it may appear that Dean and other perfectionists are preoccupied with competition, with being the best, essentially status-seeking, the deeper reality is one of an internal battle, for which external hostilities are stand-ins, too.
I find Dean’s insight, quoted above, to be profound because it illuminates one of the hidden mechanisms of a penchant toward perfectionism, hyper-competitiveness, and extreme risk-taking – a core desire and almost innate need for limitlessness. Perfectionism, in particular, thrives on meaning, which is somewhat good but largely bad. Although the fixation on competition provides the perfectionist with a reason to live, it also sets them on a destructive path. Dean, while repeatedly trying, couldn’t handle not being the best. Alex Honnold, his rival and later friend, overtook him as a free soloist and Graham Hunt, his close friend and apprentice, overtook him as a BASE jumper. Dean adapted and pivoted from free soloing but his inability to deal with the latter lead to his untimely death, contributing to excessive risk-taking in order to prove himself. The duality of mind makes his a sad story. You wonder: What would have happened had Dean decided to take psychotropic medication instead of resisting? What if he needed to admit his vulnerabilities to effectively deal with them, maybe even coming to accept them as the foundations of what made him who he was? What if his courage was nothing more than a weak disguise for his fear?
Fundamentally, perfectionism is the deep-seated fear of oneself. Compete all you want, but you will still be there, unaffected and unchanged in any meaningful way, even if you win. Despite all of his wonderful qualities, Dean’s life is symbolic of the current landscape of hypermasculinity, evident in the manosphere. While Dean exhibited a softer side, which makes you want to excuse his aggressive one, it did little to keep him out of harm’s way for long. An ancient Greek idiom reads: Your character is your fate. And Dean, like Alexander the Great, who sought comfort in the symbolic meaning of a trailing eagle as Dean sought it in a trailing raven, succumbed to his darkest impulses, hence the title of the series. Dean was an example of a life dominated by fear. For it usually won.
But, while character may be fate, fate doesn’t dictate character, at least not wholly. In the penultimate scene of the series, Dean’s sister quotes Dean saying, “The key to happiness is following beauty and not the urge to be the best.” She follows up by noting that Dean consistently failed to live up to his own insight. Meaningfully, Dean’s life was beautiful. His climbs were beautiful; his glides were beautiful; his passion; his wisdom; his love; his commitment; his merits; his pursuit of greatness, at least at times when done for its own sake; his values and love of nature over wealth; his writing; and his ability to feel deeply. I wish there were a way to convince Dean that he didn’t need to fear himself and that a diagnosis like depression is manageable. I wish he didn’t fear boredom, emptiness, sadness, and fear as much as he did. And I wish he didn’t find so much meaning in perfectionism. Had he fully accepted perfectionism as a mere coping mechanism for those fears, would his life been different? Would it have scared him too much to devalue his need to compete, to lose his edge? The saddest part of it all is that he isn’t remembered for being the best but instead for all that he made beautiful. But, he was unable to transcend the only limitation that mattered, made solely, or at least mainly, by his beautiful mind.
Perfectionism is a cover for something that isn’t there, used to hide flaws that only feel fatal. Perhaps, in addition to following beauty, we can recognize the existential obligation to reveal that which is already beautiful in us. Perhaps, sustainable meaning is associated less with victory and more so with self-discovery, the quest to reach beyond the rigid limits of our self-concepts. Perhaps, an additional win doesn’t add or say anything meaningful. Perhaps, what can be said already has been but you weren’t able to hear it. Perhaps, your perfectionism is little more than a cover for a baseless fear.
Leon's Existential Cafe 