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Personal growth can be painful. I don’t recall a single time when I’ve experienced psychological growth from moments of triumph and success. My growth has always come from profound moments of self-understanding — and those have tended to come from painful insights about my mistakes and failures.

I had another one of those uncomfortable moments this morning. I woke up thinking about a dream I had about a woman I once dated. That’s her above. Something disturbing hit me that I’ve been thinking about all day.

I’ve always had impossibly high standards for myself. The fact that I couldn’t be perfect made any slight error I made feel like failure. My imperfections made me feel worthless. I’ve been trying to deal with that perfectionism for a long time.

What I hadn’t realized until today was that I’ve unconsciously applied the same standards to the women I’ve loved. This has warped my view of these women.

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I don’t want to live in Mark Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse.” I’ve already see what Zuckerberg and Co. have to offer. Regardless of their intentions, the results of living in the virtual world they’ve created have been monstrous.

I embraced the online world far earlier than most. I had my first CompuServe account in about 1986. Before long, I was deeply involved in forums, message boards and bulletin boards. I became part of the early culture of “cyberspace.” We saw ourselves as pioneers — and we believed we were part of something great which would change everything.

As those early nerds days evolved into the fashionable world of social media, I came along for the ride. But over time, I became horrified at what I saw. Those of us who thought we were pioneers in something great were wrong.

We were pioneers who laid a foundation for something which would ultimately cause damage in “the real world.” And now that Facebook and other social media platforms have shown us just how dangerous they can be, Zuckerberg is asking us to double-down on trusting him — by joining him in something he calls “the Metaverse.”

If we have a shred of wisdom remaining in our online-addicted brains, we will run screaming from the dystopian future which Zuckerberg is so eager to sell to us.

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As I walked Lucy through the neighborhood a couple of nights ago, I waved at a neighbor who was sitting on his front porch and smoking a cigarette. I like this guy a lot, but my immediate reaction was judgment.

“He knows that’s deadly,” I thought. “Why in the world would he keep doing something that’s going to kill him?”

And then my inner observer laughed at me mockingly.

“And why do you keep eating things that you know will kill you?” the voice teased. “Do you think you’re better than he is?”

I’m a hypocrite. You probably are, too. We all love to judge others harshly while we create excuses for behaviors in ourselves which are just as bad — and sometimes worse. My deadly diet is among my worst habits — and it makes me a hypocrite to criticize anyone else who’s making unhealthful choices.

I fear that the modern American diet is going to kill me. Nobody is forcing it on me, but I feel trapped in a deadly pattern — and there are many millions on the same path of slow suicide with me.

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