Perfection

by Vincenzo Latronico

This passion of theirs wasn’t learned. It was a natural consequence of the context in which they had grown up.

Their families didn’t get it. Working for themselves from home was already viewed as suspicious, a little too much like all those afternoons spent messing around on their computers after school.

Their idea of a revolutionary future didn’t go beyond gender balance on corporate boards, electric cars, vegetarianism. Not only had Anna and Tom not had the chance to fight for a radically different world, but they couldn’t even imagine it.

It had all become too samey.

Through all of this they continued to document their remote working life on social media. The pictures were always stunning, enticing—prickly pear groves, Camparis on red plastic beach tables, sunsets over vineyards, carved tufa limestone facades, stray cats, their laptops usually somewhere in the frame to prove they weren’t on holiday—evidence of a life of freedom and adventure, one full of beauty and hard work, and with occasional surprises. Yet something in their spirits had changed. Back in the day, looking at images like those and knowing how frustrated and unhappy they had been when they took them made them feel ashamed, deficient, as if the reality presented in the photos should somehow be capable of triumphing over how they really felt, and that their inability to enjoy such a desirable life revealed a flaw in their character. They had outgrown this insecurity. Now those images just seemed like a con.

The reason they had tolerated, even loved the work, they will tell themselves, is because the repetitiveness provided a counterbalance to the limitless growth and broad horizons of the rest of their days. Now, they will realize, nothing remains but the work.