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Pleasure disappoints, possibility never
If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be—for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?*
It’s the phenomenon of possibility itself that brings about breakdowns. When we create a possibility, we create a new context, and when that possibility is big enough, the reality we’re currently living doesn’t match up with the new context. There’s a gap, that gap starts to create breakdowns, and we experience what’s happening now as inconsistent with the possibility. If we hadn’t created a possibility that took us beyond where we were, there would be no experience of a breakdown.
We disempower ourselves in dealing with breakdowns when we entertain conversations about what’s wrong. The minute the conversation becomes about what’s wrong, we try to fix and/or change what we see as wrong, and lose the possibility we created. Why? Because the possibility we created can’t exist inside “something’s wrong” or inside the “solution to a problem.”
How do we get the possibility back? In recognizing that what’s happening is a breakdown, we can return to a conversation for possibility; restore, recreate, and regenerate that possibility; and take actions to fulfill the possibility. We become a powerful opening for action—we get to know what’s possible in being human.
*Kierkegaard
Manal Maurice
Landmark Forum leader
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