Never Enough

A complicated musing on philosophy

“At some thoughts one stands perplexed—especially at the sight of men’s sin—and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

It’s when we take away hope that resentment takes root.

Goal-setting is all well and good, but it fails when it is too grandiose. Because if you plan to reach the moon, but don’t have the resources to build the rocket, then what you are left with is despair. If you are told that you’ll be aboard the rocket as a reward for your work, and then that doesn’t materialize, you begin to resent the false hope of the promise. You trusted, and were betrayed.

We are often told that extreme independence is a trauma response. Perhaps. There is also that broken trust—shards of it still poking through the skin. If we can’t rely on anyone else, and we can’t even rely on ourselves to be enough to accomplish the goals we set, what then? Knowing you’ll never be enough is in itself enough to prevent you from attempting anything again. Doing it independently at least limits the damage: if you fail, you’re the only one harmed by it. But when others rely on you and you fail, trust shatters into slivers that wound everyone involved.

So we minimize the damage by trying to do things on our own, as much as that is possible. Which it never fully is. Humans are social creatures, meant for camaraderie and interdependence. To be completely alone is a terrible thing few can survive. Loneliness drives people to the ends of the earth, to where nothing seems to matter any longer. There is no future, and that is the death of hope. We need others. Others need us. When we are no longer needed—or wanted—the heart breaks. We are set on earth for companionship.

Some of us have failed. We have been unable to fulfill the requests of those who asked us to do what we could not. The mind crumples under the impact of our own inadequacy. This is something some few endure over and over. At best, we are able to facilitate something for a time, but eventually we become inadequate to the tasks asked of us. We crumble away, and someone else steps in and succeeds where we could not. Perhaps that will have to suffice.

There is little any one of us can do. Little good we can reliably bring into the world. We can improve a little every day, knowing that someday we will fall down in failure and watch all that building wash away like a sandcastle in the flood. And then, in the flatness of the ebb, we can begin building again. It will pass. We know it will pass. And yet. Here we are, compelled to carry on. To put one foot in front of the other. To draw in a painful breath, to feel the discordant pounding of the heart. We are still needed. We cannot stop now.

The only thing that truly matters is what we can do with our own hands, in our own small sphere, for those we love. Peace, comfort, and joy: for the rest of life together. We can only pray we do not fail in this. A prayer that ascends in perfect hope.