Weltschmerz and Our Eternal Expectations of Perfection

Note: I write posts for another website. 
Occasionally, this website decides not to publish one of my posts. 
So I post them here. Enjoy!

I am a perfectionist. You are a perfectionist. And we all are optimists.

At the back of my mind, your mind, and the mind of the person sharing your office, subway car, or grocery aisle, there is a constant reminder that the ideal world is so very different from the actual world. It’s this continuous and often subconscious comparison of our surroundings, our colleagues, our friends, and our activities to their potential that often leave us feeling disappointed, adding another tally mark to the column of bad experiences. Heavy morning traffic? Bad. Free donuts at work? Good. A phone call from a close friend? Good.  At the end of each day, both categories contain several sets of five, scratched into our memories. Yet, most mornings, we awaken, refreshed with the idea that today will somehow be better, closer to the ideal, more perfect.

We’ve never experienced this perfect world, yet we know what it looks like, feel like, and sounds like. Powerful commercials and advertisements sell this ideal world to us by suggesting we can be stronger, happier, and content, while song lyrics expound the moment when we will finally feel satisfied – when we meet that special person or attain a certain level of success. Message after message reinforces the idea that we have a few more steps to take, or a few more dollars to spend before our lives look and feel complete. When we will accept that our lives will never be perfect? When will we feel weltschmerz?

Weltschmerz, or world grief, is a German word for the feeling the results from understanding that the idealized world we create in our minds will never become reality. While some of us experience weltschmerz temporarily, most of us cling to our idealized notions about our existence and our potential. We choose to return to these idealized notions of peace, prosperity, love, and health, this perfect world we imagine and believe should exist.

But, if none of us has had a perfect life, why do we continue to pursue it? Is it because of ideal moments, when we purchase an item that will somehow make our lives better, or meet someone who seems to understand us, or experience some kind of serendipity? This longing surpasses materialism and all the offering of the modern world. Will this longing ever be satisfied? Or should we be realistic and retreat into a thought pattern of pessimism, of misery, of weltschmerz?

Victor Hugo wrote, “The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.”  Most days, we are awakened every morning by the possibility of what might happen, not what is already written in our daily planner. We see each day as a step toward a brighter, better future.

Why are so few of us apathetic? Why do we keep striving to foster progress and create the future? Paul Samuelson, an economist and Nobel Laureate, once asked, "Is the joy of the universe outweighed by the weltschmertz of those who do not win?" Despite the outcome, most of us keep searching for joy, finding broken pieces of it in our fallen world, slowly reassembling the fragments we find. Because in reality, we aren’t searching for the unattainable, we are searching for a life we will some day attain.