“The desire for excellence has been carefully instilled from an early age as part of an educational model focused on competence, efficiency, and external recognition. We are taught that only those who excel deserve attention, and that the value of an action, or even of a person, is determined by its results. As a result, perfection becomes an unquestionable ideal, while success appears as its visible manifestation. However, this success is unstable, as the pleasure it brings depends on the validation of others and not on a clear understanding of oneself.
Pride—whether for achievements, cultivated abilities, or idealized images—acts as a subtle form of self-defense that, in the long run, erodes emotional life. What begins as self-affirmation ends up hardening sensitivity, compromising judgment, and weakening the ability to relate to others. Under its influence, vulnerability is perceived as a threat, and openness as a sign of inferiority.
Perfectionism, by excluding error as a learning opportunity, interrupts the spontaneous development of emotional and moral intelligence. Its logic denies the possibility of sincere connection, since any attempt to conform to ideal models nullifies the uniqueness of the other. In this context, the demand for flawlessness transforms human interaction into a conditional, calculated, and therefore sterile relationship.
Love, on the other hand, is not constructed or perfected. It is not oriented toward ends or projected as an attainable state. It is a presence that is not defined by attributes and does not operate according to categories of merit. It does not arise from a desire to improve, but from an unrestricted attention that does not seek to transform what it welcomes. The contemporary tendency to replace meaning with efficiency produces a growing mechanization of behavior. The effort to improve becomes a habit without interiority, a habit that produces results but not understanding. In this process, action loses its intrinsic justification and becomes an instrument. The musician no longer plays for the love of sound, but for the symbolic benefit that the performance may generate. Art, then, ceases to be an experience and becomes a technique emptied of meaning.
The current educational and cultural system values competence over understanding, and performance over love for the object itself. Under this logic, the end absorbs all means, and activity loses its autonomy. The beloved thing—be it a craft, a vocation, or a person—is instrumentalized in terms of measurable achievements. But when love is absent, the source that gives meaning to the action also vanishes. Deprived of this dimension, even the most celebrated success becomes a sophisticated form of loss.”
Prabhuji
