failure Archieven | Existential Reflections

Essays

Perfection is an illusion. Pursuing it is a recipe for unhappiness

Menno van der Land / September 6, 2020

There are many ways in which people can make life hard on themselves. One of the best ways to do so, is without a doubt the pursuit of perfection. Perfectionism is a recipe…

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Musings

Fromm’s The art of loving

Menno van der Land / April 29, 2019

My favorite quote from Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving is this one: “There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which…

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Musings

On failing

Menno van der Land / February 8, 2019

When something goes wrong, a lot of people blame themselves. They feel they have failed, they are to blame. Does that sound familiar? In that case I would like to share an analogy…

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Every time someone asks me if I have children, and my answer is ‘no’, I am amazed that the default follow-up question is: “why not?” Apparently it’s OK to ask people to justify their highly personal life choices. Especially when those choices deviate from what is considered ‘normal.’ People who do have children rarely have to defend themselves. Although in my opinion it makes more sense to ask people why they chose to have children. A convincing answer to why you would bring children into this world, proving you have given it proper consideration, seems more appropriate to me than having to justify staying childfree.