Even a perfect effort —does such a thing exist? Let’s just say, our best effort— leaves something to be hoped for, could be better.
What’s bad is losing oneself in the imagination.
Perhaps we could ‘lose ourself in our imagination’ responsibly — I think of great artists, poets and writers —, but this supposes presence, a strict barring-off of the superfluous…
What I mean when I say ‘lose oneself in the imagination’ is what I know from experience every day of my life: the roaming mind, in spite of ourselves running away…
What’s my problem? The tragic view (“it’s just this way”); self-pity; resentment of myself and (inevitably in consequence, the two going together necessarily, born of the same mistake) others, what I see in the mirror and around me.
I am trying and I do some good work. There are small wins. In the midst of them, of course, there are little failures too, little defects and ugly spots; but, if we are wise, we overlook these things and go on (we try to at least).
It is never perfect and it never quite matches the image we have in our mind. In our mind it’s perfect; in reality it can’t be, and naturally so, humanly so; if we find it perfect it’s because we make it so, that is, we believe it so, it’s just how we feel in a certain moment; inevitably the next hour or the next day, soon enough in any case, it’s not going to be perfect when we think of it. We have a ‘perfect’, our ‘perfect’, moment to moment, but it doesn’t exist objectively, it’s only in ourselves in a particular moment or two; it’s only our own, and it’s bound to change, hour to hour.
I fall to thinking so easily. I think of that meme, the fellow with his brain, an oversized potato, too big for his head and falling out on the floor. It’s not intelligence; it’s fear; it’s a lot of my life spent in the corner, watching others act and thinking instead of joining them, not daring to act myself, because afraid: full of thoughts.
Two quotes from Alain to end this thing:
« Notre pensée n’est pas ainsi faite
qu’elle puisse marcher la première ;
qui pense ses actions
n’agit jamais. »
*
[Our thinking isn’t made in such a way
that it can go first [before action];
those who think out their actions
never act.]
*
« L’imagination est peut-être
la plus redoutable ennemie
de l’homme pensant,
par ceci
qu’avoir peur fait coire,
et croire qu’on a vu. »
*
[The imagination is perhaps
the most fearful enemy
of the thinking person,
in that
having fear makes you believe,
and makes you believe you have seen.]
Gray Haskins 