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I had this seemingly wonderful dream that turned into a nightmare. I went to my doctor for a checkup and he ran every test in the book on me and finally said, “Mr. Roberts, you are perfect. I cannot find a defect or a problem anywhere in your body.” He said the secret to my perfect body had to lie in my mind and asked me to go to a psychiatrist to see if they could find the secret to my perfection. I went to see the one he recommended and the man took pictures of my brain, asked me a million questions and then declared, “You have no psychoses, neuroses not abnormality anywhere. You are the most perfect human I have ever had in this office.” The two doctors then called a news conference and announced to the world that they had found the perfect human being. People started calling from all over the world wanting to study me or just meet me. The government showed up with a small glass house on a mobile home chassis and they forced me into the glass house and sent me from town to town where people came out and gawked at me. When I awoke from this dream my first thought was, “Thank God I am not perfect!” What can imperfect people do with a perfect person except gawk? A perfect human in a world of imperfect people is destined to live a hard life. The imperfect must find some imperfection and will make some up in case they cannot find any, just as the authority figures of Jesus’ day made it appear to the Romans that Jesus was a big security risk. A perfect man would engender profound jealousy and jealousy leads to all kinds of psychological and physical violence. Just a few days after that dream I read this from Anna Quindlen: “The thing that is really hard and really amazing is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” As nasty as the work can be to become yourself, you can actually achieve that goal if you constantly remain aware of all the forces that are working against you. The major forces are all those who want you to be what they want you to be. They can imagine your future in great detail. They can even select you a wife or a husband! From the day you are born, you will have to deal with those who want you to be what they want you to be. They will lavish love on you when you accept their counsel and they will withhold love when you “misbehave,” which is simply to not let them run your life. Nothing in this life requires more courage than to be what you want to be. Sometimes you will see and feel it at an early age. Like my brother who said from childhood, “I want to be an engineer.” Mother would show his hands to Dad and say, “Oh Roy! Aren’t these the hands of a brain surgeon?” and Blaine would just say, “I want to be an engineer.” Sometimes we come by what we want to be slowly. I took some tests to find my skills and talents. I followed some exercises in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. I had to constantly go to my soul and as things developed, I wanted to be a lot of things: writer, musician, storyteller, politician, etc. So far I have been able to be everything I decided to be but I reserve the right to decide to be some other things. I often say, “I may want to be something different when I grow up.” I do know I don’t want to be perfect. Being towed from town to town in a mobile glass house would not be a good life.
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