So why, when we know perfectly well that reality is nothing like what we imagine, invent, and indulge in, do we still choose to imagine, to invent, to indulge? As it turns out, I am very good at dreaming up the perfection I long for, inventing it, losing myself in fantasies of it. And as it turns out, all of this comes down to deceiving myself: the world is in tatters; only the idea of it is exquisite. This is a trap, a tempting one, a trap that does me no harm yet leaves me aching with pain and sorrow—the pain and sorrow of desires that cannot be fulfilled. And precisely because I know it will do me no lasting damage, I choose to leap into it, this trap I have built for myself. I swing between happiness and suffering, letting happiness tell me that there are things in this world worth longing for, letting pain tell me that I qualify as human, that I have the full range of human feelings and desires, that I am someone unusual—someone who willingly puts himself in distress.
Perhaps it is less that we have a gift for imagining beauty and a tendency to deceive ourselves than that we are willing to make ourselves suffer for the pleasure of feeling alive. So all joy is false, and all pain is real.
I will carry a perfection I can never reach through the whole of this tattered life of mine.
要政阳
October 16, 2026, Santa Clara