“I worked so hard to improve myself, but I am still so imperfect! Yesterday I yelled at the neighbor, and today I ate like a pig …”
I call it THE COCKROACH PRINCIPLE: One small cockroach in a wonderful soup makes the entire soup disgusting.
But the opposite isn’t true: A spoon of wonderful soup on a bowl of cockroaches does not make the bowl attractive.
This means the asymmetry of good and bad: A little spot of dirt makes the shirt dirty, but a clean spot on a shirt does not make it clean. If you tell a lie once a day you are dishonest, but telling the truth once a day does not make you honest. Making a vulgar joke once a week makes you vulgar. An ugly table makes the entire room ugly.
That is how one nasty comment from your friend can destroy a long friendship of many hours together. That is how one or two small mistakes can make you unreliable in the eyes of your boss, despite months of good work.
In short, one imperfection is enough to make you bad, but one perfection does not make you good. That’s how our psychological thinking patterns tend to work. But should we accept them as a principle to follow?
Let me propose the opposite principle – the PRINCIPLE OF A SPARK IN THE DARKNESS: One little spark of light in the darkness illuminates the entire room.
Thus, if your day is boring and dull, then one precious moment can make your entire day worth it. One act of bravery can make you a hero. And a deep insight once a week can make you wise.
This is what philosophical contemplation does: It gives you a spark of light for a few minutes.
Just a small spark – contemplation will not transform you into a Buddha, it will not make you enlightened. We are human beings, and no popular slogan of “self-transformation” will change that. We are psychological creatures, governed by psychological mechanisms and blind emotional patterns. At the end of the session, you will return to your old self with the same familiar weaknesses – with the same fears, the same petty jealousies, selfishness, trivial desires. You will be the same psychological person – but not exactly the same. Because now you will be a psychological person with a precious spark in your heart. And that is a huge difference.
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