Misadventures in the Land of Fables #34
How do we deal with things we want but cannot reach? Aspirations or goals, which after making every effort, prove unattainable?
Aesop’s fable of ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ describes one method: lie to yourself. Dismiss the goal as not worth having and move on. In modern parlance, you might call this a coping strategy, though I suspect Aesop and his translator were not recommending it. The lies are transparent. The fox contradicts itself. Suddenly denigrating that which a moment earlier it coveted. Its motives are plain to see.
I wrote about it a few years ago [here], but find myself returning repeatedly to the same theme. I am uncomfortable with lies, suspicious of the plasticity of beliefs, as practiced by some, and recommended by self-help gurus, and yet I acknowledge the utility of it.
How else do you move on, without carrying a burden of failure?
The new variation, ‘Two Foxes and a Bunch of Grapes,’ stays closer to the original, but considers what happens if you fail to move on, if you are unable to match your behaviour to your revised attitude, because you do not believe it, or have even found your attachment to the unattainable has stiffened.
You can read it here: ‘Two Foxes and a Bunch of Grapes‘
