For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.
Interpretation
A person's self-assessment is influenced by their aspirations and insecurities, while others judge them based on their actions.
Eleanor Catton's quote emphasizes the distinction between how individuals are perceived by others through their tangible actions and words, versus how they perceive themselves through their potential and aspirations. It highlights the complexities of self-judgment, which is shaped by imagination, doubt, and self-esteem. This suggests that self-judgment is often clouded by internal factors, making it a nuanced and subjective experience.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, this quote can serve to illustrate the internal struggle many face.
My sense of injustice about our family's 'weirdness' in not owning a car was amplified by the fact that we did not own a television, either - my parents were unapologetic about this and told me very cheerfully that I would thank them for it when I was older, which was quite true.
Often I listen to songs on repeat for days and days at a time. There's something hypnotic or meditative, and it mirrors the way that I am putting the sentence together, going back over the same phrases again and again.
Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one.
The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes a painful re-imagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.
I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
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