distinction between ideal and reality

[apple jiang]

When I was a kid,I wanted to be an actress and then I could experience various lifestyles and careers.Now I grow up,but it still remains a dream.Too many things prevented it coming true,and all I can do is to just watch it happens and let it go.feel upset sometimes when I reflect upon my way.I tell myself that this is reality. do you have once tasted the distinction between ideal and reality?

[amanda_isabel]

apple,

yes i have, several times, tasted the painful difference between ideal and reality. and the best advice i can give you, apple, is, well, just know the difference between the two. don't lose your goals and whatever is ideal, but never lose sight of reality. dream with your feet on the ground.

and as far as your dream goes, apple, ask yourself some stuff first. you know what you want. and it's possible that you have what it takes to get there. if this is the case, then you don't suffer from a lack of talent or resource, maybe you suffer from a lack of will. if you really want it then go for it. with willpower, you'll get where you want.

know what is ideal and bring it to reality. all it takes is willer and a bit of elbow grease.

good luck!

[muhsin]

Sometimes its not a distinction that use to comes between these two concepts, but just a God's destiny.

We, as human beings, are born with omen, good or bad. So, don't feel agitated, frustrated or otherwise, whatsoever happens to us, it has already since been designed to happen.

I wish you the best. Perhaps, to be an actor/actress(I doubt what you wrote) is not what is best for you and your life entirely.

Hope for good rather that bad for your fate.

[sHaRp12]

My suggestion to you apple is to eye a goal that you feel is obtainable and feel you'll be happy with and pursue it with the best of your efforts. Forget about everything else.

[byquist]

Hmmm - this is a good issue. Good question. There's a book if you can get a hold of, "The Seven Habits of Successful People" by some guy out of Utah, yea his name is Steven Covey. One of the habits talks about "circle of influence" -- trying to determine what and how much in your life that you have a measure of control over. After you define that, then little by little you attempt to enlarge the circle if possible. But, by staying mostly in the "circle of influence" you have some measure of composure and poise and contentment hopefully, and don't get discouraged at not obtaining unreachable goals.

However, not obtaining some measure of your honest, natural and intuitional desires, is not right. If you want to be an actress, you should be one. You should have "acting" in your life in some form or another. Maybe you could form an acting troupe and give free plays with your friends. Maybe you could learn to do mime and earn money on the side by performing. You can memorize dialogue and speeches from plays. You have to prepare yourself for that type of business. You have to figure out, step by step, how to turn the acting ambition into a money-making endeavor. Or a partial income. Also, can you be a teacher, which is closer to being an actor/actress than most jobs?

Try to develop a plan; look around at what is possible in your vicinity. Try to find a mentor (someone who you can get training and direction from).

There will always be thing getting in our way trying to prevent our aims. Get used to it, and not upset about that when it happens. If you develop a sense of humor about the blocks that try to prevent your accomplishments, you won't get sad. Also, regarding the acting, study the skills of the successful ones, say Michelle Yeoh.

[apple jiang]

thank you indeed guys!!
amanda, I think you are right,one should be optimistic toward life otherwise he will miss lots of oppotunities to penitrate meanings of life.

[apple jiang]

muhsin, actually I believe fate just sometimes, because I think that is just the excuse we search for when we are frastrated and hopeless and don't have bravery to hold on. another thing is that I did write actress.

[apple jiang]

muhsin ,anyway , thank you for your suggestion!

[apple jiang]

My suggestion to you apple is to eye a goal that you feel is obtainable and feel you'll be happy with and pursue it with the best of your efforts. Forget about everything else.
thank you.actually, this is the suggestion my teacher offen gave me, but you know ,it's easier said than done.....

[apple jiang]

byquist, yes I have seen that book once in the bookstore,and it even has Chinese version,but I didn't pay much attention to it because I was occupied with other things. I will try to find it soon,thank you for your advise.

[Fat29]

I supposed the difference between reality and ideal is what one has versus what one wants. When there is less wants, then the line between reality and ideal becomes closer. Sometimes, I feel that when there are less wants, our vision of ideals become more attainable, we become happier and we also become more selfless. This is because wants of things would no longer distract us from living the life of blessings to others.

[mono]

In a very Buddhist philosophy, I would have to agree with Fat29's post:

When there is less wants, then the line between reality and ideal becomes closer.
So long as an individual desires and this desire persists, something nearly inevitable in the common person, the ideal and the reality will always appear far separated. The relinquishing of all desires, especially material, and concentration of avoiding such desires may dissipate those desires.
Despite what goals appear attained, what material seems earned, what wonderful deeds and ends seem met and satisfied, one will desire other things to the point that such goals seem unrealistic, unattainable, and unspecific.
In essence, one determines his/her own ideal, but, of course, the reality always appears attained and earned; furthermore, one can only work one's self so hard and so diligently before an 'expectation exhaustion' occurs - failure, despair, and suffered by many. Too often one replaces hopes with expectations.

[TENNWH]

Without ideal, there is no reality. Everything we consider a reality was first a thought.
I remember reading comic books, 50 years ago depicting space traveling and Dick Tracy with wrist communication systems. At that time, they were considered fantasy, now they are realities. I could go on and on with examples, but I think I have made my point.
I would suggest that you read -- Think and Grow Rich -- by Napoleon Hill. He spent 20 years interviewing hundreds of people that society considers successful to determine why some people could obtain their goals and others could not.

[Ryan_002]

I don't know if the two are really seperate. Most hypernarratives generally require them to be. Plato's Republic, with its suggestion that "all artists are liars", and the concept of the Platonic Ideal, would claim a differance between the two.

The achievement of philosophy, at least in a modern sense, has been the levelling of a single dualism at all binaries. The medium is the message (McLuhan), or one may even say "There is no outside of text" (Derrida)Knowing this, there is perhaps no distinction.

[subterranean]

When I was a kid,I wanted to be an actress and then I could experience various lifestyles and careers.Now I grow up,but it still remains a dream.Too many things prevented it coming true,and all I can do is to just watch it happens and let it go.?


Did you take acting class or singin lesson or dancing course or whatever course that are actually can take you forward in reaching your dream?

If you just sit and do nothing, then why complain?

[alter-native]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve

[Eagleheart]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve
Solemnity serves as much to the accentuation of truth as to the accentuation of illusions...

[Neo_Sephiroth]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve

True...Whatever the human mind can concieve...Can be believe...But that which can easily be conceive...Cannot always be achieved...

[ghideon]

I can not imagine anbody past the age of,lets say, 30 who has not had to deal, to varying degrees, with the gap between what they had once dreamed of and their current situation.

There is one aspect of fairy tales, not widely understood, that may also shed some light on our personal struggles concerning hard knock reality. Almost all fairy tales, from Snow White to Hanzel and Gredel involve some pretty nasty characters. Mean step-sisters who make a nice girls life horrible or a crazy old woman who lives in the woods and tries to cook two children.

This evilness seems a bit counter-intuitive. One would probably assume that young people want happy stories so they can read them or hear them read before they go to bed and then fall asleep with warm ideas and feelings.

Yet, it seems there needs to be real dark side goings on to engage a reader, even a small, little, vulnerable reader. I do not know enough of the analysis of fairy tales but I think that there may be something to be learned here about the nature of fantasy and dreams in relation to dangers,troubles and evil. Perhaps we find some comfort in these tales being deeper then stories of light and love. There is certainly a strong pull to want to protect children from just about anything that may conceivably hurt them. These stories may offer a way around that excessive, but understandable, parental impulse. Somewhere we must know that quite often, "reality bites."

I would be fascinated to know if other people have thought about this question and have any thoughts, ideas about it.
Myth,symbols,fairy tales and stories are of enormous importance.

Freud had said that his writings about patients were much more like stories, narratives, then scientific record keeping.

[subterranean]

Reading this thread reminds of a message from someone (whom I don't know) in my friendster's inbox yesterday, asking about idealism and whether I'm an idealist. I personally never considered myself as one, but I believe on some principles that should not be changed/compromized regardless of the situation/condition that I have.

[Redzeppelin]

I don't think we ever reach the ideal. Anybody who has tried some creative activity knows the frustration of the idea you had in your head (be it poem, painting or speech) and its actual execution. I think you shoot for the ideal but accept that reality will generally be less than ideal.

Which poses an interesting question: why does the distinction between ideal and reality exist at all? Why is our execution rarely like our idea?

[Eagleheart]

Which poses an interesting question: why does the distinction between ideal and reality exist at all? Why is our execution rarely like our idea?
The execution is intricately connected with conditions, with a world governed by the will, actions, intentions of other human beings/ and not only/...there can never be a direct relationship in "ideal-reality", because the ideal is not governed by the same laws as reality, it is a creation of the mind, while the reality is a mass administration of multitude of ideals or ideas, where rarely one sees total overlap between different people's projects...Succintly put: the ideal may be a responsibility of a certain individual or groups of individuals, while reality may be a responsibility of the living things...After all no one can create the ideals or ideas of the others, no one can project a world responding to and influencing his/her ideal, so as to execute intentions accordingly, which, by any event, determines the discrepancy between ideal and reality...

[Redzeppelin]

there can never be a direct relationship in "ideal-reality", because the ideal is not governed by the same laws as reality, it is a creation of the mind

So, perhaps the "ideal" is influenced by our imagination's freedom from the constraints of reality?

[Eagleheart]

So, perhaps the "ideal" is influenced by our imagination's freedom from the constraints of reality?
Definitely...What is so captivating in the ideal is its capacity to sustain itself in the defiance of reality's laws...
The phenomenon of infatuation with ideas may be mentioned here as an interesting occurence...One so convinced in the brilliance of his idea/ its merit being that it is his/ that one is readily declaring the following of this idea as the right path for mankind? Could it be the same for the ideals? What is more dangerous in an ideal - that it attemts a project of the world on its own or that it could fall in the domain of anyone...

[summer grace]

I think we all have dreams when we are young. Usually, as we get older, we have to revise those dreams. They usually are more based on what we want as a child, how we want to fulfill ourselves than they are about adult realities. We often want to do something that would be ideal to us in our minds, and would most likely make us happy, but we have to have our basic survival as well. Often, people end up pursuing more practical careers, sometimes because there is no choice, sometimes because it seems more desirable/practical in the long run.

Some ideals never bloom because of circumstances. Many more are over because of money. I think that's unfortunate because childhood dreams are often not wholly unrealistic. It is also true that people do best what they do naturally. But, when you have to make a living, you often get forced to give up your ideals. I think you really grow up the day you realize that the world doesn't care about ideals, it cares about reality. Ideals are what we wish, reality is what is, like it or not. Sometimes, it is hard not to wish the world understood ideals more. I think that way so much, but all there is the cold, hard fact. '' We all have dreams at first light/by night these dreams disapear''- as I once put it in a poem I wrote.

[Chava]

Sometimes reality works out better than the ideal, and that can make me very happy

[Eagleheart]

I believe the majority of ideals are not engendered in deep concern for reality, but are a defiance of reality...They rarely serve the concepts of a better world, only the reclusiveness of intellect; even if we discern an ideal, it carries the selfishness of ideals that are rather more and more avoidance of responsibility for the world we live in, repressing it more and more, without presupposing advancement...These ideals are engendered in faint-heartedness...How modern is this phenomenon I ask myself...

[Bii]

I believe the majority of ideals are not engendered in deep concern for reality, but are a defiance of reality...

I entirely agree, I think ideals exist as concepts of 'perfection' however we conceive them, but in the face of reality they crumble. I'm not overly well versed on philisophical history but am I right in thinking that it was Plato who first voiced the concept of 'forms'? I think that ideals are, in a sense, an embodiment of these 'forms' which Plato judged to be the perfect/original version of something i.e. the mould from which all other less perfect copies are formed. So in existence is a concept of justice, for example, but the justice which is practiced on earth is a less perfect copy of that (sometimes really really less perfect!).

In general I think that the concept of 'ideals' is something which makes humans, human. We have the ability to imagine, to concieve of something bigger/better/more perfect than that which we experience (reality) on a daily basis. That imagination gives us hope and hope keeps us going.

I also agree that expectation is an issue - sometimes we expect too much and because of that we are disappointed. I think this is especially true of the modern age where there is so much information thrust in peoples faces about what is available that people want to have/experience everything. When this isn't a possibility then people become jaded / depressed / disappointed. Sometimes focussing on the simple side of life is a better way to go.

I suppose my question for you apple-jiang is what was the focus of your goal? Did you want to be an actress, or did you want to be rich and famous? Is it possible that your goal of being an actress is still within the realms of possibility - i.e. local theatre, amateur dramatics societies etc; or is it out of reach because what you were looking for was what you perceived to be the lifestyle of famous actors/actresses who get to travel the globe, get paid disturbing amounts of money and seemingly have everything? I wonder if, even had you achieved that goal, would it have measured up to your 'ideal'? Would you have still ended up disappointed? Ideals most often measure up to reality when they're simple. I'm yet to be disappointed by a clear blue sky, or an unexpected act of kindness. In my mind, these things feel the same in reality as they do in my 'idealised' expectation.