What does the Royal Wedding remind you of ? It reminds me of Larkin.
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
It reminds me that sometimes we do things we really oughtn’t to do - like get married to someone we don’t really love. When Prince Charles and Lady Diana married they really shouldn’t have - and I think they both knew that at the time. How could they not have? We all did. We all knew that something was very wrong when he made that remark, "...whatever love is".
We knew it, and he knew it, and Diana knew it too... they must have, because anyone in love knows exactly what love is and you don’t need to be verbally articulate to express it - it’ll be written all over your face. But they went ahead and got married anyway. A mistake they both made for other reasons and for other people - it wasn’t their own mistake. It was a "so called" marriage.
If you have to make a mistake, let it be your own - do not make someone else’s mistake. Lets hope William and Kate are making their own mistakes. I’m on William's side. I’m a little worried about Kate.
So why do we do things we ougthn’t to do - why do we just go ahead anyway? Sometimes, we just don't know when to throw in the towel and to admit that we have made a mistake.
Sometimes we do know we have made a mistake but we just don’t know how to walk away.
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
But instead of doing what we know we ought to do, instead of seeing things as they really are, instead of cutting our losses and walking out, we continue to devote our time, energy, and money to doomed relationships, digging a deeper hole rather than trying to climb our way out of it.
Why? Well we probably worry about all the time and effort we have already invested. We worry far too much about what we'll lose if we just walk out, and not nearly enough about the costs of not walking out - more wasted time and effort, and more missed opportunities.
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
So what should we do? Research by Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui, suggest we focus more on what we have to gain, rather than what we have to lose. Psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus. When Molden and Hui asked participants to think about their goals in terms of potential gains, they became more comfortable with accepting the losses they had to incur along the way. When they adopted a prevention focus, on the other hand, and thought about their goals in terms of what they could lose if they didn't succeed, they were much more sensitive to what they call "sunk costs".
So this is the trick - if you make a deliberate effort to refocus yourself prior to making your decision, reflecting on what you have to gain by cutting your losses now, you'll find it much easier to make the right choice. Apparently.
D. Molden & C. Hui (2010) Promoting de-escalation of commitment: A regulatory focus
Poetry of Departure
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
Philip Larkin
Posted by Annabel
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