Poisonous aspirations

These days we set objectives and fill up our diaries months ahead. We strive continually to improve ourselves: physically, psychologically, intellectually, spiritually. There's a truly massive industry supported by our sense that we are not fit, serene, rich, beautiful, happy, stable, educated, witty, creative, productive or just plain good enough.

We also have instant access to images which show how far short of the ideals we fall. No matter we know many of these images photoshop the truth: with their aid, we can vividly imagine and compare ourselves to the dream. Now some would say that the urge to be a better version of yourself is wholly a good thing, that it keeps us from becoming complacent slobs, wasting our talents on a life of TV and junk food.

I'm starting to think that the story of the Fall from Eden is all about this. Once you have knowledge of perfect 'Good', it is extremely difficult not to strive for it, or to fear, judge and attempt to conceal your lack of it. These are the features of being fallen, and shame at one's nakedness makes a good symbol. Nakedness is vulnerability, honesty - introducing the separation of good and evil leads to anxiety, grief and a desire to cover oneself.

But we don't learn best when we feel stupid, and regimes based on denial can take us only to the limit of our will power. Willpower is a finite mental resource, besides depleting other functions when it's being used. It's a temporary, stop-gap approach: it can't be the foundation of anything.

We all know that the second something is identified as a 'target' for some business or public service it becomes much less useful and generates unfortunate side effects into the bargain. Making something a target changes its relationship with its context.

I recently heard about a hospital target set to discharge recovered patients by 11am. Intended to speed up release of both the patient and the bed, in practice it led to some patients staying an extra night so that the target could be achieved... the following day. Similarly, we rank schools by exam results, and unwittingly affect the attention given to everything else that happens there: healthy physical, emotional and social development, creativity, self discovery. A growing body of research shows that when we reward children for anything we quickly re-focus their interest towards the reward and away from what we were actually trying to encourage. And this seems to be the case even if the activity we were rewarding was something they wanted to do in the first place.

Let's all stop looking over our shoulders at ideals of mind, body, heart and soul, and instead let our current lives fill up our whole attention. We're not perfect. Nobody can actually be perfect: perfect is a moment, as considered in a particular context. It's not something that can be an ongoing attribute of a living being. The attention you withdraw from striving can be reinvested in your actual life. And that will surely lead to learning and growth and do so easily because the effort is drawn from you by interest and supported by what's around you.

So put aside objectives and aspirations: they cast you out of Eden. Make peace with fallibility, your own and everyone else's, and you'll be instantly back there, and realise that you never really left.