2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
“If by the age of twenty you are not an idealist, you have no heart, and if by the age of thirty you are still an idealist, you have no head” (Renfold Bourne)
The first course of the Faculty of Psychology began with drawing techniques. Classic pair "I am real / I am ideal". We drew. For example, a frail tree with five leaves and a luxurious lush-crowned oak. Or, say, a vulnerable little mouse with a thin tail and a lazy graceful panther. In general, an interesting pastime. We discussed, analyzed with the air of pioneering scientists, relished insights, finding differences and ways to overcome them. What does a squeaky mouse need to become a fearsome panther? What does it mean to be a mouse in principle? What are the joys of panther life? What does a mountain ash need to become a centuries-old oak tree? Maybe water it with something? This is how the story of yet another utopia begins. Having nothing to do with reality.
Ideal life. Ideal husband. Perfect wife. An ideal person (or maybe even a super-person, to each according to ambitions). The perfect child. Perfect friend. Perfect relationship. Have you met many of these? Me not.
Moreover, the more we strive for the ideal, the more rapidly we usually move away from the real. Real life. Real relationship. Real people nearby. Real yourself. Himself, sometimes showing weakness, sometimes cowardice and laziness, aging, sick, dying in the end, but real, alive (for now).
Of course, the balding Alphonse with a beer belly compared to the seducer Butler (even Mitchelovsky, even Hollywood) is melancholy … And awareness of this in some cases helps to shake up, to think about what suits you and what does not, what / with whom you are ready to live and how exactly, and with what / with whom you cannot live. But can a collage picture of an ideal world be an alternative?
The ideal is seen as a kind of finished product. As a perfection that we can meet, find (if we are lucky, or if we pray strongly, if we bargain, if … But it happens in fairy tales).
Against the background of an ideal picture, reality may seem especially unattractive, pitiful, deprived. We draw ourselves an image of an alternative, ideal scenario: “if I met …”, “if I was young …”, “if I was rich …”, “if I entered another faculty then …”, “there then” … But life has no subjunctive mood. There are no “ifs”. There is only one real life, in the "here and now", with real people and real relationships that we do not find, but we form from day to day, hour to hour. As well as myself. And the right path is not in the movement to the abstract ideal I, but to the concrete potential, which includes not only the approved sides, but also our own Shadow.
The potential I is what we can really become, what we already carry inside ourselves (even if it is not yet manifested). Unlike the ideal, to which we with talents and weaknesses, may have nothing to do.
How ideals are formed. Have you thought about the nature of the ideal? Well, for example, the ideal life of an ideal woman (the imperfect life of an ideal woman? The ideal life of an imperfect woman?).
Often, the ideal is something prompted or imposed on us from the outside. Formation of the ideal is often associated with the concept of "right", for example, "right" to get married, have children, a good stable job. It is “right” to have a certain appearance (maybe in a wide range, but still within some limits), certain skills and abilities. Of course, the Western world of the 21st century as a whole offers quite a lot of freedom, more varied variations than were allowed a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago. But the framework of a single family where a child grows up (for example, you) remains quite visible. The ideal self is formed through parental messages, what parents encourage and what they don't. What they think is good and what is bad. What they give approval and what they condemn. Then, the views of educators, teachers, peers and many other people and social institutions, into which we enter as we grow up, join the parental family. Having traveled such a long way, having carried so many eyes and opinions through myself, it becomes difficult to remember Who am I really? Who am I in my potential? However, how to distinguish where are my own treasures / cockroaches, and where is someone else's luggage (a suitcase without a handle), which for some reason I carry.
But in the end, if we assume the possibility of questions and answers after a lived life, then you will not be asked: Why did you not become Dostoevsky or Greta Garbo? And they will ask: Why did you not become yourself?
This question, consciously or not, we ourselves ask ourselves throughout our life. And if we do not realize our potential, we experience a wandering feeling of guilt (existential guilt for “a crime that we have committed against our fate”), a heavy, painful feeling “something is wrong”, “this is not my life”, longing for the unrealizable … This feeling can persist even if everything is formally good, close to the "ideal" set, but the feeling that all this is not about me does not recede. As Yalom aptly pointed out, redemption is achieved by immersion in the "true" vocation of the human being, which, as Kierkegaard said, is "the will to be oneself."
What is the difference between ideal and potential?
The ideal is based on an idea. Potential is based on real life opportunities.
“The one who is fascinated by the idea, He is blind to what he is clothed with”(P. Malakhov).
The ideal presupposes the absence of flaws; it demands perfection. The potential does not pretend to be. The real and the potential relate to each other like an acorn and an oak, like a child and an adult. The ideal, however, can be something completely foreign, alien to the real. The ideal would require a pumpkin seed to become a rose bush. But a pumpkin seed can only grow into a pumpkin: strong or stunted, it may not grow at all, but it will not become a rose.
The ideal is almost always associated with the socio-cultural context, with external requirements and expectations. The change in the social environment, life context, culture also changes the image of the ideal.
When I work with my clients, the question of real and alternative always arises. A person comes with difficulty in various areas, but in the end it is dissatisfaction with the real situation. But what could be the alternative? Ideal? No. Although it is he who is most often drawn. Utopian ideas about a wonderful ideal world, where everything is fine, where children always listen to their parents, where husbands and wives are always in love with each other, where there are guarantees for feelings, where there are no diseases, and if you are lucky, immortality. Perfect as an illusion. New illusions, the destruction of which hurts again and again.
The alternative or alternatives, because there are always several ways out (remember the anecdote, even if you were eaten by two ways out) appear as potential opportunities. They are inseparable from reality, they are realistic, although they are much wider, larger, bolder than the usual, not satisfying reality. Potential opportunities are what we have, but for some reason we do not use. Our dusty resources, our own power, which for some reason we refuse …
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