The Flaw in Flawless Futures

I’m coming to the end of my Creative Writing course at university, and as people coming to the end of things are wont to do, I’ve taken to looking back over the course and wondering about the past, the present, and the future. So, in other words, yes, I’m procrastinating from finishing my coursework.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I look a few years into the future I picture myself as a different person, who has undergone some kind of fictional character’s development and matured into the flawless final product of who I was meant to be. And every time I set myself up for this, and every time I simply end up looking back to the start and laughing at how similar I am to the person who started this chapter of my life.

I’ve changed, of course, grown in various ways. Just the other day I unearthed my old alternate Twitter account, in all its dreadfully unfunny glory, and realised that I’d stopped posting to the account just before starting uni. Surely, thought I, this had been a project of a teenage Kristian. And I suppose it was, but I’d have been verging on 18 at the time. So yes, while some parts of us don’t change, other parts do, and it’s my belief that over the last few years I’ve grown more reserved in my personality. Perhaps too much so. But that’s straying into autobiographical territories.

I remember when I went to my course’s open day. This was a few years ago, so my memory is somewhat patchy, but I remember meeting my lecturer, wandering the campus, hearing about the course and thinking that this was my introduction to adult life. This was where I’d grow my wings and become truly independent, forge stronger friendships than ever before and really come in to my own as a writer. By the end of my third year I’d be self-sufficient, no longer neurotic or uncertain of myself or grappling with the edges of my mind. And this may come as a surprise to you, but my predictions turned out to be less than accurate. They were, in fact, the same predictions I’d had when I started sixth form, and even when I started secondary school. I remember sitting in the grand hall alongside hundreds of other kids and thinking, this was it, this was a fresh start, and by the end I’d be a refined, perfected person.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not crying, “Woe is me!” in this blog post. I just find it interesting how the future can appear to one as a solved problem, and all one has to do is get to the other side of it. Even now, as I prepare to leave the educational nest, I can’t help but have this vision of myself in a few years when I’ll have a good job and a place to live, standing on my own two feet and maybe starting on a few books, finally able to be happy in my stability and become this mythical figure I’ve always dreamed of.

Some would chastise me for that cynical last paragraph and say that such ideas are optimistic. And hey, fair play, they, you know… are. I’m supposed to be an optimist myself. But I know me. And it’s not that I don’t believe in myself or anything like that. It’s more to do with the idea of always being the same person at your core. Even if I do find my own place to live, get a good job, start becoming a writer and all these other excellent things, I’ll probably always be neurotic, uncertain of myself, less interesting and less remarkable than I’d like. And that’s okay, because that’s what makes me, me. If these things do change, they’ll happen slowly, over many years and in many small, undocumented little skews to my personality as I grow in the world. Maybe you only ever get what you want when you stop wanting it. When I was a kid, I’d hear a group of friends in their early twenties chattering excitedly about one thing they all enjoyed, and I dimly remember wanting almost nothing more than to be that age, with those enthusiastic friends and conversations, and the independence to go wherever with them, whenever. And I have that now. And I should be more thankful for that.

The biggest issue in my life right now is stability. I need a job. I need my grades. I need independence, and safety of mind. I need other things too. But I’ll always overlook the problems close at hand, towards the idea of a perfect me some years off. And this isn’t some magical revelation that’ll solve all my problems and give me a whole new perspective in the world, because that’s not how the mind works. It’s merely… an observation.

Irresolute

The characters we create in fiction often have solid resolutions to their inner or outer dilemmas in order to fulfill our own imperfect journeys as writers.

Similarly, as readers, we look up to and admire characters which reach these resolutions for the same reason. We watch a narcissist learn modesty through friendship. We observe as someone who is in love either fulfills their desires or overcomes them after rejection, or realises they are neglecting the one they truly have feelings for. And, when you think about it, the characters which don’t get resolutions, such as the murderers and the morally taboo, end up dying or going away to live unhappy lives somewhere else.

We have the ability to idolise unhappy and even flawed characters because we recognise that they are in the midst of a story arc which will give them resolution, even if it ends in tragedy.

This often leads to frustrations in real life when our own problems do not turn out to be definitely resolvable. We may feel temporarily overjoyed when we realise a flaw such as, for example, exhibiting neurotic tendencies on a day to day basis. We may be able to work on those issues and move forward as a person. But when it turns out that, some years later, we’re attempting to work up the nerve to talk to someone we like and instead become obsessed with coming across as stupid or unattractive, we become disheartened. Hadn’t we solved this already? Wasn’t this 2015’s story arc? What happened to all that character development?

Life is not fiction. And if we spend our lives striving to achieve the perfection and solidity that fiction portrays as normal in real life, then we’ll end up going in circles and spiralling into a self-loathing ball of despair. People can go backwards. Life lessons can be unlearned. The fact that solving one problem didn’t solve the bigger picture that was invisible to you at the time does not mean the bigger picture is unsolvable.

We’re told many things in younger life that seem obvious at the time. Yeah, I’ll be sensible with money, that’s easy. I won’t hurt people, only an idiot would do that. And this is another one of those: yeah perfection is impossible, got it.

You don’t “got it”.

And now that you’ve got it, don’t get frustrated when you forget it again.