Aspiration and the Unlived Life
“The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.” — Ashley Montagu
In a speech in May 1972[i], psychiatrist, author and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl described the concept of “crabbing” from his flying lessons. The term refers to when a pilot orients the aircraft to counteract the effect of cross winds which would otherwise cause the aircraft to drift off the intended flight path. Although the aircraft is facing upwind, it is pushed back along the desired flight path.
Frankl relates this idea to humanity and the need to be idealists by overestimating what a person can be — “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse, but if we overestimate him … If we seem to be idealists and are overestimating, overrating man, and looking at him that high, here above, you know what happens? We promote him to what he really can be. So, we have to be idealists in a way because then we wind up as the true, the real realists.” This isn’t just for others — we must also pre-suppose the best for ourselves. By having the highest possible aspirations we can account for the “cross winds” of life, those things that drag us off course, and we can still achieve our potential.
One of the cross winds dragging us off course is what Steven Pressfield refers to as Resistance[ii]. “Most of us have two lives.” Pressfield explains, “The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” Pressfield writes Resistance is “an impartial force of nature” whose mission is to sabotage aspirations.
Much has been written[iii] about the regret of an unfulfilled life. It has even been suggested a definition of Hell is that on your last day on Earth, the person you could have become meets the person you actually became. Pressfield refers to this as the “unlived life”[iv]. To avoid this fate we can recognise the latent possibility in ourselves and others. Parents of young children, teachers and sports coaches know this. It can quite literally create a self-fulfilling prophecy [v]. Frankl was echoing German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who wrote “If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”
[i] https://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_youth_in_search_of_meaning
[ii] The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
[iii] https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
[iv] https://stevenpressfield.com/2020/10/the-unlived-life/
[v] The Pygmalion or Rosenthal Effect describes how one person’s expectations of another will effect their performance — a virtuous circle is created where higher expectation results in better performance.
