Philosophy for Disappointment

So I’ve recently had a disappointment. I think it’s unusual for some, but I tend to get over these things quite quickly. No fuss, no mess. On to the next thing. It got me thinking about the students and how they feel during the process of exams. The build up, the waiting, the doing and then the waiting for the results that never come until that last weekend in August. Nervous telephone calls or hands shaking as they open the brown envelopes that determine where you will go next.

This is a problem. We take for granted that our actions, judged by others, will determine where we will go. It works all the way through school. Do well, move up, do badly move down, bump along and you’ll stay where you are. Leave school and you get a tick and sent up to old buildings and older people who spend far too much time on their own research and not enough teaching you anything useful, or you get cast aside to the ex-polytechnic. Start the world of work and the process of application and interview, an archaic practice, leads to success or failure on the slimmest of margins and the most evasive of marginalia.

 Do we need to accept our lot? Going gently into that goodnight? The great and good who make the calls that govern our lives do so without all the facts. Universities dismiss students with credentials that would make Einstein weep for not having a suitable grade in French, employers refuse applications from those without the right piece of paper but all the ability.

Why do we accept this ? There is after all, another way. Sometimes it takes a boy and his imaginary tiger to show us sense. I remember a strip where Calvin told Hobbes what he prayed for –

The decisions made for us on the basis of statistics that have no bearing on potential growth or future performance need to be questioned, and if they can’t be reversed let us be brave enough to follow the advice above – let our energies pour into our struggles for what we desire out of life. As the great Dartfordian Philosopher Michael Jagger said – you can’t always get what you want.

But if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need…

Remember - when life slams a door in your face, a dozen others open to see what the hell all the racket is.

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