It is past time that I wrote something which is about a topic separate from my current medical issues!! Otherwise it might seem like that is the only thing on my mind – which is far from the truth. OK – it does tend to dominate – particularly at some times during the cycle – but there are plenty of other things occupying my mind.
One of the difficulties I find with a blog is knowing what to write about – hence the need for sources of inspiration. Its not that there isn’t plenty of thoughts going through my head, but rather that it canbe difficult to focuse on something for the purpose of writing here.
My muse at the moment is the book I am reading – The Shrink and the Sage which is co-authored by Julian Baggini (the sage) and his real life partner Antonia Macaro (the shrink). The book is based on a series of articles for the FT magazine (a full list of the articles to date can be found on Antonia’s website) and it examines a number of issues that are central to “a good life”.
Predictably (and I have to say satisfyingly!) as I read the discussions I am struck by both the fact that so much of what they say is already embedded in my own worldview and the fact that it always triggers more thoughts – and it is these triggers that I intend to address here and in subsequent posts. Not sure that I will mirror all of the chapters, but certainly there will be some thoughts about many of them that inspire me to write.
Being the best you can
Its no real surprise that this is a statement that gets discussed – but the important bit is that the statement does not stop with “Being the best” – it is qualified because – with very few exceptions we are not going to be “the best” no matter how hard we try.
Perfection is not something a human being can achieve.
This is so true – but so often overlooked as we strive to be “good” at something. The danger is, of course, that in trying so hard to be perfect in one thing we lose sight of our huge imperfections everywhere else – which is bad enough – but made worse with the realisation that no matter how much effort we put in its never going to be perfect.
We need – crucially – to strike a balance. We need to be as good as we need to be in all aspects of our lives – hence the “being the best you can” because often we are stopped from being better – not by inability – but by the need to better at something else as well!
One of the recurrent themes in the book is the fact that there is no real black and white to this – in every sphere of our lives we must decide what is “the best we can” – given the fact that we need this balance with all other spheres of our lives. I could be a better father if I stopped trying to be a better worker – or could I? Often it is difficult to see where one ‘skill’ ends and another starts.
We hear of people who ‘retire’ to spend more time with their family – perhaps what they retire from is what their family most admires in them – and removing that from their lives, far from improving the family relationships, simply make them more difficult.
So – we must strive (as best we can) to be the best we can be – and recognise that – even with our best efforts – we will probably fall short of what we really desire. Without that recognition we simply torture ourselves into thinking that we are not good enough – often because circumstances have conspired to rob us of the opportunity to be any better. We cannot control all the factors.
In two previous posts ( If Only and Only If) I addressed the fact that there are so many ‘little’ things that can derail us unexpectedly. If these stop us from being “the best” then we must recognise that we may still have achieved “the best we can”!! It is pointless to pour criticism on ourselves, or to feel that we “should” have done better when it is down to circumstances over which we had no control.
Here we have it again – we can hypothesise all we like – but we cannot know the alternatives. We cannot (sensibly) beat ourselves up for what we did not know – but this should not be used as an excuse for a sort of fatalism. Every action we take impacts the future – often in unexpected ways – indeed the number of unexpected (or perhaps better put “unconsidered”) outcomes of each of our actions dwarves the number that we did consider.
We shall see these sort of issues returning when considering other aspects.