Monday, January 7, 2008
Loss, at Long Last
"Tyrannical fantasies of our own perfectibility still lurk in even our simplest ideals, Darwin and Freud intimate, so that any ideal can become another excuse for punishment. Lives dominated by impossible ideals - complete honesty, absolute knowledge, perfect happiness, eternal love - are lives experienced as continuous failure" (Phillips). If perfectionism is ultimately humiliating and the best source for (self)punishment, then: no more ideals! Suffer because one must, suffer without the hope of getting it right. The question is how to sustain any sense of optimism in this condition. The answer is easier to write than to practice while writing, so to speak. Darwin: "I have as much difficulty as ever expressing myself clearly and concisely, and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time." But this loss of time is also necessary to get a better sentence, a more thorough reasoning. No one better to see this than Phillips: "The obstacle proves to be an instrument, the loss a calling." What is required is to accept the necessity of this loss. It's reveling in loss, being optimistic about loss as instrumental, that is most difficult, especially when the loss lasts so long.
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2 comments:
This is a portion of what I wrote in response. I will spare you the rest.
Phillips says “ Lives dominated by impossible ideals - complete honesty, absolute knowledge, perfect happiness, eternal love - are lives experienced as continuous failure" He is right in that we can not ever hope to achieve these at a perfect level. But we need to work toward them and with every faltering step that we make toward that, we have to build on what we already know. Maybe that is perfection in the human relationship. Picking up the pieces of what one has experienced in the past and incorporating it into the stronger, more whole, more knowledgeable person that we can be.
Rob, Loss of time in the service of "perfectibility" is not a negative thing. You are talking about a paradox: perfectibility is not something we can achieve efficiently in a short time. Becky has it right that we must focus on the increments, the "baby steps." Allow yourself to revel in the small achievements day to day.
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