Too often, there is a human tendency to focus on the good and deny the bad. Or, we can elaborate our successes and immerse ourselves in our failures. Either way, we don’t see things as they are.
The reality is that everyone has good days and bad days, strengths and flaws, successes and failures. Our successes need some humility. They are rarely our own without the help and support of others.
As far as our failures, Samuel Beckett, the writer said it best: “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail Better.” Failing better means, learn from the failure. Success is so often born of failure.
Iris Murdoch: “We need three things: Attention, Realism and Imagination
Iris Murdoch, a British writer and philosopher expressed in her many books, how we should live in our dealings with other people. Galen Strawson, quoted her in saying that “we need three things: attention, realism and imagination. “ He emphasizes her additional idea that one has to fight the “fat, relentless ego.” Strawson interprets Murdoch as implying that we don’t have to fight it in order to be unselfish, rather he suggests that “when the ego is swaddled in fantasy, it shuts down the ability to give attention, to test for reality and use imagination. In short, it prevents one from seeing how things are.” (Italics are Strawson’s)
I would argue that it is good to see how things really are. I remember a team tennis match with a person on the team who hit a bad shot, what tennis players call an “unforced error”. She so berated herself, that she couldn’t play well for the rest of the match. Where was her attention to the game itself, where was her sense of reality or her ability to use her imagination to see the next good shot she could make?
It was lost because her ego was filled with the fantasy of how bad she was. She was not able to see the reality that she is human, she can make an error, like everyone else and she can recover. Instead, she sunk into an abyss from which she could not pull herself out: and unfortunately, the team went down with her that day.
When we can see how things actually are, then we have choices. Once one acknowledges a problem, one can give one’s attention to it and take steps to change it. If one sees he or she is failing a class, one can use her imagination to find a way to get help. Likewise, if a marriage partner is willing to see that his or her wife or husband is unhappy or to see his own unhappiness in their marriage he has new options. He can bring his attention or focus to it, he can imagine how he would like it to be and begin to talk with his wife from a place of their present reality. They may find a new grounding and starting point in their situation. Then, together, they can take the steps to change.