Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Perfect Imperfection
By Silver Sailor Ganymede
In the end it is striving for perfection that makes us all failures. Sometimes you were born thinking there was a fate that made you immediately imperfect, sometimes there a traumatic event occurred and made you wish to surpass everyone and everything, something there was no reason, but everyone, at least almost everyone, wanted to be perfect.
If you were born overshadowed by a prodigal sibling then your abilites would go unnoticed even if you were in fact as good as they were. And when they went insane with their lust for power, all that would be left would be revenge, wanting blood, their blood, as payment for all they had put you through, be it on inadvertently or on purpose. So you tried to be perfect so that you could make them pay.
If you were born too early or too late you could either be the most important person in the world or you could exist only as a tool. Being born too late was a curse; they already had their heirs. You had no meaning, no worth; you would amount to nothing, nothing at all. Your fate was simply to serve, to be bound forever, to never have a choice in anything… not even your own death. So you tried to become perfect so that you could overcome them and their foolish traditions and ideals.
If you were born into a place where people told you that you were perfect then that was only going to lead to frustration. The more they told you how wonderful you were, the more you felt the need to prove to yourself that this was really the case, the more you realised how foolsih humans really were, how useless they were, how they would honestly be better off in the arms of death. They were nothing more than a hinderance to you; you killed them all. So you tried to become perfect in order to see what perfection truly was.
In the end it is striving for perfection that makes us all failures. They knew that, but still they strived, and still the always failed.