My Uncle was a perfectionist. By the age of 20 he’d decided that life was a horrific thing and the only honorable response was to kill oneself.
At first he wrote a rather lengthy note that ended up being several pages. Upset at his inability to write clearly he enrolled at a prestigious college to take one or two composition classes. While walking by a philosophy class he heard the professor quote Camus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” He walked in, sat right down and began to argue. He ended up getting so involved that he took more and more classes getting his Bachelors and then working on his Masters while being a grad assistant. He eventually became a professor and finally a Ph.D. who was the head of the philosophy department. When he retired well into his 60’s. Having finished with his academic career he sat down to finally finish his suicide note, which at this point was 3 volumes. Despite his years of study and endless discussion and rewrites he was never truly satisfied with the final draft. It wasn’t until just shy of his 78th birthday that he had a draft that was ‘perhaps acceptable’.
He was so excited on the day he went to the publisher to sign off on the final edited proof that he keeled over dead. His heart had given out.
