His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people
Terry Pratchett
Why do you continue to do something when you are convinced that it is no longer worthwhile?
Every now and again – perhaps more often than we might care to admit – we develop – well lets call them habits – that persist long after the justification for them has lapsed or, even worse, the habit has become damaging in one way or another. I’m not talking here about anything that is necessarily pernicious or threatening or even “wrong” – simply no longer worthwhile.
It struck me as quite strange today that there were two words that sprang into my vocabulary out of, seemingly, nowhere that turned out to be much more ‘apt’ than anything that I could have used to replace them. What was even stranger was that these words were both adjectives, both used to describe “me” and almost entirely opposite in meaning!
Once upon a time… no this is not a fairy tale – this tale has its roots firmly in reality – this would have been my opinion. My “gut-instinct” on this question though has changed through time. Nowadays I would subscribe to the view that there are times when honesty is not only “not the best” policy, but is actively amongst the worst!!
When writing to a friend this morning I found myself unable to find anything worthwhile to say because all the ‘obvious’ responses were sounding like platitudes. You know the sort – someone is feeling a bit “down” and you say “pull yourself together” – or someone tells you that they have broken their leg and you say “hope it gets better soon”!!
Hmmm….. is that really the case? So often we might say “would you believe what she has done” or “I wouldn’t have thought they were capable of that” or “you would never have thought that of him” or some other, similar, phrase to describe some ‘unexpected’ behaviour from someone.
Once again – as in the case of Memories my thinking has been triggered by the theme of a service at church. This time it is the issue of our fallibility – our propensity to get things wrong – or, as stated yesterday, the mistakes we have made. Whilst I certainly do not claim to be perfect, there are some parts of “making mistakes” that I’m far from sure about.
When it comes to “right” or “wrong” it seems that, increasingly, there is a continuum from one extreme to the other and little agreement as to where in that long line any particular thing resides. Even the most heinous of acts can – from some perspectives – have some aspect of ‘good’ about them. Equally – something done with the best of intentions can be portrayed as evil – if the ‘wrong’ slant is put on it.
Although the entries in this blog are sporadic and are not following any particular pattern there are a few themes that run through them and which recur in different posts. I’m just thinking that it might be as well to provide a bit of a summary and a few links to enable easier browsing between related posts.
Last week the world lost a unique talent when Terry Pratchett passed away.
In previous posts I wrote about the way in which I have “re-interpreted” an East Asian belief regarding the “Red String of Fate”. It is time to revisit the idea and to write a bit more – expanding the original thoughts and considering just what we are “tied” to.