Author Topic: Don't count your blessings  (Read 2196 times)

ZeaLitY

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Don't count your blessings
« on: January 04, 2010, 03:52:57 pm »
I have a disagreement with the virtue of counting one's blessings. This advice is often given to people who have suffered loss, whether a family tragedy or a failed project. They're told to think of all the good things that they still have, and to minimize the importance of failure.

This is a nothing but a diversionary coping mechanism. For people to have a meaningful life, they have to define some kind of meaning; they have to be lucid, and attached to reality. In other words, they have to care about certain things, so they can invest effort, and reap happiness. They have to master themselves, and cultivate their desires and appreciation of good fortune. It's hard to be a self-mastered person or go far while living in a shade of poorly-understood, weakly-anchored gray. The majority of the great achievers of this world wanted dearly what they've achieved, even to the point that their passion burned inside them, refusing to let them dawdle. Likewise, the majority of tragedies are about people with meaningful attachments to reality who suffered abject loss. If someone who has suffered incredibly for some high ambition just shrugged it off, can it be said that they ever really cared about it in the first place?

And so, "count your blessings" is indicative of shallowness. It's pretending not to have cared about something desired or appreciated so that the loss of it hurts less. "Oh, it really wasn't that important, and besides, we've got so much else to be thankful for!" For many, it's distracting oneself with other pleasures and projects, or moving the goalposts shorter than one's original ambition to compensate for failure. It's a weakness. It's also a problem of religious thinking. If one is guaranteed entrance to heaven, what does this life become but a waiting room-dalliance—a sampling of earth life without concrete consequences; a rationalizing of chance and fortune to the will of God? Yes, there are those who believe good works are needed to get into heaven, but their own passions and efforts are hampered by this stop-short attitude of "well, we tried; God can take care of the rest," or attributing the outcome of enterprise to divine will.

For those with implacable lucidity and a rationalistic anchor to this life, there can be none of that. This life and universe are all we have, and we lack a time machine. We can only say, "We gave it a good effort—but we failed." There's no, "...still, look at all of this and that we have!" And there's no appeal to religious fate, underscored by the knowledge that one will still go to heaven or enjoy an afterlife. There is nothing but that internalization of failure: acknowledgment of the inalterable past, in which one suffered true loss. It can't be changed, rationalized away, or averted. If counting one's blessings is sentience yielding ground to the uncaring universe by castrating some of its ambitions for the sake of emotional comfort, then recognizing and owning one's loss is standing fast against the abyss; of staring into loss and saying, "I am still standing, and I am still growing."

This is a true seed of strengh. Unforgettable memories (excusing psychologically severe ones that inhibit function, like PTSD) make a person grow stronger. Failure forces a person to overcome it, if they still have the alacrity to pursue their desires. Failure necessitates self-evaluation, mastery, and learning; it humbles a person in a way that allows them to view their flaws, and then set about conquering them. Failure is a teacher, and a reminder to try even harder. Failure, not success, propels us towards our limits; challenges us to keep moving when we feel defeated; shows us our existing comforts—our "blessings"—and nudges us to fall back into safe harbor; taunts us with the fleeting image of success, just beyond its guard! Failure is what must be trod underfoot on the path to victory!

Quote from: Henry Ford
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

Quote from: Ruben Gonzalez
The main reason people fail is not because of lack of ability or opportunities. They fail because they lack the inner strength to persist in the face of obstacles and difficulties. That's why trying something almost always leads to failure. By definition, trying something means you will quit if you are not successful.

Quote from: Napoleon Hill
Most of us go through life as failures, because we are waiting for the "time to be right" to start doing something worthwhile. Do not wait. The time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Quote from: Bruce Lee
Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Quote from: Og Mandino
The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.

Quote from: John Maxwell
To achieve your dreams, you must embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.

When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic. It's not personal. If you want to succeed, don't let any single incident color your view of yourself.

If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough.

Quote from: Jim Rohn
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Quote from: Japanese Proverb
Climbing a mountain, one should not give up when difficulties accumulate. Accumulating merit, one should not complain about fate.

Quote from: Captain Ahab
The path to my fixed purpose is hid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' bed, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

In almost all its modern usage, "count your blessings" stands ready to pulverize the seed of strength that comes from failure's teachings. It seeks to divert your attention to other comforts, and to minimize how much you truly cared about what you just lost—and by extension, the power and awareness of your self-will and connection to life. It may have its uses in combating some forms of depression, or an irrational excess of emotion over tragic loss—but counting one's blessings doesn't have a place in the spirited heart of lucid ambition. The one who really seeks, when told to count their blessings after a failure, will say, "I still failed. But I'm going to keep moving." They will get stronger, and next time, they'll win, and achieve their dreams.

Never give up. Never let your passions be diluted by too much comfort and vague, fallacious notions of security. As Douglas McArthur said, "There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity." And as for counting one's blessings—the greatest blessing you can give yourself is that of finishing what you set out to do in the first place; of growing and mastering yourself in the process. So kick reason to the curb and DO THE IMPOSSIBLE!!



"The whole of the universe is but the birthright of sentience," just as Radical_Dreamer coined, you know?
« Last Edit: January 04, 2010, 04:58:56 pm by ZeaLitY »

V_Translanka

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2010, 04:09:38 pm »
You can think of it as a kind of survival mechanism. By thinking of the good things you have going in your life you're probably releasing some endorphins into your system in order to fight off any possible depression from the loss or w/e negative aspect you were thinking of...*shrugs*

It's just a way of balancing the system. The saying isn't saying that you should forget about the negative, but that you should remember the positive as well and not dwell too much on your failings...Though to be fair, most of these types of sayings were probably made with short-sight & simple, quick solutions in mind...sorta like oldschool t-shirt slogans or something...idk...

Truthordeal

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2010, 04:41:50 pm »
Zeality, I can appreciate the wisdom of your words, but you've got to bear in mind that the human race is...well...human. We have limitations, we have problems and overall we can't deal with all of them in a broad straightforward fashion like you want without breaking.

Your Springtime of Youth ideology gives you a leg up above the rest of humanity, and it's one of the very few things that comes out of your mouth that I unconditionally support, but even you are still human. At some point during your life, you will have to rely on a coping or defense mechanism to deal with a stressful situation, and you will be better off for it.

I fear it won't be until human evolution reaches its next apex that we'll be able to completely do without them, but until we manage to break ties with our very human psychology, biology and physiology, that that can happen.

Thought

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2010, 04:58:31 pm »
Oh I disagree; to have a meaningful life one must have a healthy detachment from reality. You even acknowledge this in your own post. In reality the impossible is, as the word might imply, impossible. It is utter fantasy that you can do the impossible. It is this fantasy that allows reality to be changed. To abuse something that G.K. Chesterton said:

The real world tells us that dragons exist.
Fantasy tells us that dragons can be slain.

“Counting your blessings” is not about pretending that you didn’t care about something, but acknowledging that you are a full human being, that you exist beyond that which you have lost. Indeed, it is a coping mechanism as V pointed point. No setback, short of death itself, can conquer the individual because there is more to the individual than that one thing. This is an encouragement to not give up, to not dwell on being defeated but on how you can continue. If Caesar had been defeated in Gaul, should he have wallowed in his loss? Or should he have acknowledged the rest of his humanity and found a new way to achieve that which he sought?

You try, you fail. That is reality.
You try, you fail, you try a different approach, you fail again, you try another approach, you fail again. That is fantasy. That is what allows the world to change.

Quote from: Zeality
The one who really seeks, when told to count their blessings after a failure, will say, "I still failed. But I'm going to keep moving." They will get stronger, and next time, they'll win, and achieve their dreams.

You just described someone “counting their blessings.” The acknowledgement that there is more than that one failure inherently falls under this umbrella. Perhaps you have just encountered a few too many people who are hasty in their words, who applied the phrase where it was unwarranted to ears that couldn’t comprehend the meaning of it.

“Counting your blessings” is the boxer who, having broken his right hand, notes that his left is still in fine condition.

“Counting your blessings” is the general who, having lost one Company, notes that there is still a Battalion left.

If your defeat is something you think you should dwell on, then you are dreaming too small. Dreams worth pursuing are not the kind of dreams that can be defeated.

Sajainta

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2010, 05:00:07 pm »
I've always understood "count your blessings" as a reminder of just how good you have it, not so much as a pat on the back after some kind of failure or unfortunate event.  Perhaps that is what it originally meant, but the I see nothing wrong with the way I interpret it.  To me, "count your blessings" means to look at your life and notice all the small things that we so often take for granted.  Safety.  Shelter.  Food.  Education.  Things that the vast majority of the world have no access to, and probably will never have access to.  It puts my life into perspective, it makes me humble, and it gives me a desire to help those who are nowhere near as fortunate as I am.  I would never tell someone who has failed or who has suffered a loss to "count their blessings".  However, I think everyone here--reading this--should take into consideration how incredibly fortunate we are.  For fuck's sake, you are literate!  You've probably at least completed the equivalent of an 8th grade education!  You have clean running water and access to a computer!

Too many people don't realize how HUGE that is.  Maybe it's because I grew up in the third world that I'm acutely aware of all the reasons I am "lucky" (in quotes because I don't believe in luck), and maybe it's because of my upbringing that makes me burn with rage at those who don't realize how good they have it.  Come on, people.  Educate yourself.  Look beyond your own little bubble.  You are fortunate beyond all reason.  Most of the world would give anything to live the life you live.  Don't take it for granted.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2010, 05:12:25 pm »
To Thought, yes, there is an implicit acknowledgment in counting one's blessings that the counter is still alive. However, that's not the kind of advice I see disseminated in populist crap like Reader's Digest, or feel-good programs about rationalizing defeat. It's more to the tune of, "you still have this meager allotment of possessions; be happy!"

You say that a person must be detached from reality to fantasize about some lofty goal, but I say a person must be attached to have the passion and determination to care about that goal in the first place. If I were not so aware of the injustices of the world faced by humanity (evidencing a strong attachment to reality), I would not be so willing to dream of improving it wildly, fantasizing a goal certainly "detached" from the current reality. I don't think our statements are mutually exclusive; we're focusing on two different things.

Edit: To no one in particular, I can bring up the case of my car accident. Yes, I was totally unhurt, but why should I be happy about that, when I'm unhappy that the car crashed in the first place? The conditions of the game of life haven't been changed by the accident. I still have the same desires, and physics still stands ready to smash me if I do anything crazy. Why celebrate when fortune and chance work to my advantage, when half the time, they're working against me? It's just a big neutral. Chances are I could have not had the car accident. Other chances are that I could have outright died. It all sums to 0, so I won't dwell on it by counting my blessings, or presuming to be a beneficiary of random chance when tomorrow, random chance could kill me anyway.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2010, 05:17:58 pm by ZeaLitY »

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2010, 05:16:03 pm »
Perhaps these old types of slogans are meant to be so vague so that we can all interpret them differently...?

ZeaLitY

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2010, 05:21:29 pm »
Quote
Zeality, I can appreciate the wisdom of your words, but you've got to bear in mind that the human race is...well...human. We have limitations, we have problems and overall we can't deal with all of them in a broad straightforward fashion like you want without breaking.

I did want to say one thing to this. Carl Sagan and others have pointed to the cosmos, and then said, "look how small and insignificant we are. We're dust in the wind. The cosmos dwarf us in their splendor."

No. The real miracle is in here—here being the place you're pointing to, if you raise your finger to your temple. Sentience is the miracle and wonder of the universe. All that out there is a bunch of floating gas and rocks colliding into each other for an artificially-colored light show. I'm sure Carl Sagan knew this, but framed his statements to invoke wonder in certain members of the audience. And I'm also sure that many science fiction writers felt an urge of wonder from exploring space not because they were getting excited about rocks, but the chance to find other civilizations or exotic physical phenomena. The greatest wonder of this solar system is life. That is what it means to be only human! To possess something the dead, incalculable expanses of the infinite universe cannot even dream of having! Consciousness!! The universe doesn't even know it exists; we are the observers; the creators; the doers; the dreamers; the great potentates of existence! Ah, humanity!

V_Translanka

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2010, 05:30:22 pm »
Couldn't you then look at his point as being that we CAN think such insights/absurdities (or w/e) if we wish? We know our place in the vastness of the universe and can appreciate its beauty for that knowledge...

Eske

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #9 on: January 04, 2010, 05:53:58 pm »
Zeality, I can appreciate the wisdom of your words, but you've got to bear in mind that the human race is...well...human. We have limitations, we have problems and overall we can't deal with all of them in a broad straightforward fashion like you want without breaking.

Why?  Yes, we are human and therefore have limitations.  I can't spontaneously grow wings and fly.  I can't hold my breath for 2 hours.  I can't speak with other great apes.  I can't see the rings around Saturn.

I can, however, get on an airplane and fly around the world. I can wear a scuba suit or ride in a submarine.  I can teach sign language to and use symbol blocks with great apes for basic communication.  I can use a telescope on earth or ones floating in space to view the beauty of the cosmos.

We ARE human: bogged down with limitations and yet laughing in the face of mother nature for we have conquered so many of them!  Given enough time and minds, we can solve almost any problem, and breach almost any boundary!

So, when you say the "human race is...well...human", you make it seem like its a bad thing.  Like, "aw shucks, we are just humans and we can't help it sometimes...oh well."   

The Springtime of Youth represents another vehicle which humans can use to break through yet another boundary.
It shows that there is no need for some of these unproductive, hindering emotional reactions and crutches when one can simply control them.

Is it hard to do that sometimes?  Yes.  The more crippling emotions associated with loss and failure are so close to "home" that we may have a hard time discarding them or transforming them into something more useful.  But in our neverending quest for human improvement, it has to be done eventually.  Why not start now?

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2010, 06:48:52 pm »
Counting one's "blessings" isn't a diversion; it's a way of finding perspective. For sure there is some bias in the whole enterprise, since one's desired outcome from the act is a better emotional state. However, when you add up all of these kinds of biases, it becomes the difference between living in the thrall of one's emotions and exercising some affective control over one's life.

For people to have a meaningful life, they have to define some kind of meaning; they have to be lucid, and attached to reality.

Your choice of the word "meaningful" is ineffective here. You mean meaningful to you. Some people get by just fine living in fantasy land, never realizing what it costs them, or sometimes even thinking that reality is enough of a downer that the alternatives are better.

In other words, they have to care about certain things, so they can invest effort, and reap happiness. They have to master themselves, and cultivate their desires and appreciation of good fortune.

Here you come very close to contradicting your overall assertion. This is what "counting one's blessings" is about.

And so, "count your blessings" is indicative of shallowness. It's pretending not to have cared about something desired or appreciated so that the loss of it hurts less. "Oh, it really wasn't that important, and besides, we've got so much else to be thankful for!"

This is the part of your post that I most wanted to respond to. From this, I gather than your entire contention against counting one's fortunes is misplaced. Upon further consideration, I think you will understand that you don't have any fundamental disagreement with this practice. Your disagreement is with the act of ignoring one's failures, which is a completely different act, even if it can be concurrent with counting fortunes.

I think that, most of the time, the best way forward is to acknowledge the sting of loss on absolute emotional terms as well as putting it into the overall big picture of one's life.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #11 on: January 04, 2010, 07:19:28 pm »
Then you should make a distinction between "Counting Your Blessings: The Imperial Way" and the way mooks do it. The latter is what I'm criticizing (ignoring failure is central to that), and the former, well, I don't find any value in being "thankful" for anything measured by terms of chance. Why be thankful for something after you've just lost at some endeavor or enterprise? That's emotionally robbing Peter to pay Paul. One should just be steady and lucid.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2010, 07:26:06 pm by ZeaLitY »

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #12 on: January 04, 2010, 07:31:02 pm »
One should just be steady and lucid.

That's not how the human condition works, Z. You know it, too. What is you're really rebelling against with this thread? I am confused.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #13 on: January 04, 2010, 07:33:44 pm »
What is it? The same death-rattle that precipitated all these replies, themselves so perturbed by such a shining example of positivity and determination.

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Re: Don't count your blessings
« Reply #14 on: January 04, 2010, 07:48:38 pm »
Now I'm only a teenager, so my brain can't handle everything you guys are saying, so I'm just going to go strait to the point

Edit: To no one in particular, I can bring up the case of my car accident. Yes, I was totally unhurt, but why should I be happy about that, when I'm unhappy that the car crashed in the first place? The conditions of the game of life haven't been changed by the accident. I still have the same desires, and physics still stands ready to smash me if I do anything crazy. Why celebrate when fortune and chance work to my advantage, when half the time, they're working against me? It's just a big neutral. Chances are I could have not had the car accident. Other chances are that I could have outright died. It all sums to 0, so I won't dwell on it by counting my blessings, or presuming to be a beneficiary of random chance when tomorrow, random chance could kill me anyway.

In this case, it looks like you already counted your blessing. YOU COULD HAVE DIED!!! But you didn't. In this case, it sounds like the phrase "count your blessings" is ment to pull the meter to 0; to make things neutral. When someone goes through something bad, they count their blessings so they see the good in things. Here's is what I'm trying to say:

Failed project, or anything of the like = BAD

count your blessings = GOOD

BAD + GOOD = middle; gray; neutral etc.

Once someone hits neutral, they can can get on with there life. And you apparently have, so I suggest stop worrying about it! I will say no more