There's a line I saw on a movie.
The scenario is on a funeral, and one of the deceased's family members said that the deceased "did not suffer from the tragedy of perfection." What does it mean?
Based on the translated subtitles, I roughly know it means the deceased was not a perfect person. But why?
A perfect funeral punchline, mixing praise, empathy, and irony.
Funerals are occasions of hearing gentle words about the deceased (praise). Whatever the personality of the person. The lack of suffering is often evoked by the audience after a painful disease (empathy).
This line is to me a perfect example of irony, under the rhetoric form of the litotes, which states a point by denying the opposite. A very polite way to say, with a lot of wit, that the deceased was far from perfect, had a lot of failings, and possibly lived quite happily in that situation.
The obsessive pursuit of "perfection" can indeed be a tragedy, because, roughly speaking, people are generally imperfect and refusing to accept our own limitations (or other people unavoidable flaws) can lead to a miserable life of constant unsatisfaction.
You can find more details under the wikipedia entry for "perfectionism".
You can also consider the well-known aphorism "Perfect is enemy of good".
