Facts of life

George Bernard Shaw was one of those writers that school ruined for me by insisting on teaching his work to kids who were much too young to understand it.

But I loved some of the things that only-very-slightly irascible GBS said, including this:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

This always seemed to me to be an incitement to unreasonableness, a rallying cry for all those who can't find happiness or peace in acceptance of the status quo. This was all the permission I needed.

T E Lawrence specialised in the ill-disciplined impossible, and his actions seemed to be founded on the key concept that nothing is written, that there are no immutable circumstances.

At 65, there is still enough of the idealist whimpering in my head to make me proudly unreasonable in the Shavian sense. (People who know me would say in EVERY sense.)

But there is a conflict here.

It seems to me that a lot of unhappiness is rooted in trying to solve problems which turn out to be not problems, but facts of life. 

The most troubling conundrums, the Gordian knots of living, can be solved by quirky determination, by the sheer unreasonable willpower that characterised Lawrence. What seems impossible can be overcome.

But there is a line. Some things are beyond our capacity to change, and no end of concerted unreasonableness will make the slightest difference. 

Better to ensure that holy unreasonableness is directed at problems and not facts of life. Being unable to distinguish between them is a basic category error that can seriously damage your morale.