don’t waste your life by reinforcing failure

even Marmaduke couldn’t get me to see sense

We all do it.  Something isn’t working out so we try harder.  We really suck at our job, so we put in more hours.  Our relationship is going to hell in a handcart so we pick ourselves up and try again.  Our partner stole from us, cheated on us, abused us….. so we forgive them and start over.  This is called reinforcing failure, and it’s the biggest mistake anyone can make in Life, Love, and War.  And, nobody really understands it.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.  ~  Robert the Bruce 1314

I was taught that quotation at school, all about the fable of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and the spider.  A lot of the time it’s very true that if we at first fail at something we should go back and work harder until we succeed.  That was certainly true for me at grammar school, where it turned out that I could barely write and certainly couldn’t spell.  As the three R’s are the whole basis of modern life I had to work very hard at English and Calligraphy until I became something of a wordsmith.

If there is no choice whatsoever, then we have to keep trying until we succeed.  And yet, sometimes no matter how hard we try we are quite likely to waste our lives repeating the same mistake over and over again, because what we are trying to achieve is never going to work.  Einstein knew this, and famously said;

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.  ~  Albert Einstein

If what you are doing isn’t working, then you have to try something else instead.  The problem is that people are creatures of habits and routines, who mostly don’t want to leave their own comfort zone.  Most people don’t move house, change their jobs, or become of a different church and faith.  Not often anyway.

Relationships are different ~ around half of marriages in the USA end in divorce.  Some things in relationships are too intolerable to bear.  But 80% of divorcees remarry and about 5% remarry their ex.  Unless they do something very different in their new marriage then that’s going to turn to dross too.

Me, I spent years trying to make a toxic relationship work, by trying harder…..

Some say that when a relationship isn’t working it’s time to find someone else instead.  And that you can’t expect someone to change just to keep you happy.  All I know is that, in the relationship I just walked away from, I did the very best I could ~ most of the time.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

Einstein also said;

reality is an illusion

albeit a very persistent one