Gandhi and Orwell

Reading over the camp handbook that Eli and Larkin brought back from Vermont, I found the following Orwell quote, which led me to read his entire "Reflections on Gandhi" essay for the first time, which led me to, once again, post something I find relevant to life here in this forum for my fellow Tigers to contemplate.

After dissecting Gandhi's way of living, and his reasons for it, Orwell took issue with the extreme choices involved:

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals."

The rest of the quote is also significant, in that it, in Orwell's traditionally ascerbic fashion, rejects sainthood -- and suggests that moral imperfections are, in themselves, worth pursuit:

"No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that “non-attachment” is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work."

George Orwell, Reflections on Gandhi, 1949, par. 6
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part51.html