The clash between reality and idealisation and why humbleness works. We all know how painful it is sometimes to see what is real and abandoning any idealisation.
This painful process of growth into ‘adultness’ is part of our humble acceptance of the fragile condition intrinsic to being ‘human beings’ and, as such, fallible, mediocre and, in one word and overall, affected of the state of believing to be different from what we are, governed by unawareness and the ability of blaming others of the same defects and drawbacks we cannot (which means ‘we do not want to’) recognise in ourselves.
Flaubert Madame Bovary’s is the example of the failed norm of human life, exposed in Emma (Bovary) in the failed idealisation of love as an absolute ideal and in the lack of acceptance of realty (including oneself and one’s vulnerable humanity).
Since realty is always disappointing with respect to an absolute ideal, Emma hates it, and, when reality materialises from a state of pure potential she destroys it. So she becomes insensitive to her husband’s love and to all her lovers' love. She becomes insensitive to love [and as a consequence to life itself].
She, like all the others characters of ‘Madame Bovary’, operates and exists though and only in her ‘facade’, a personality created and imposed where the contrast between the spiritual poverty of the 'facade' and the sense of grandeur of the ideal of what she believes to be (or want to be) is unacceptable.
Thus, incapable of loving herself or anyone else, Emma loves only the emotions that the corresponding desires and expectations give her.
The expansion of the desire and its realisation and its cancellation, once reality materialises, lead to Emma nausea (which is similar, even if different, to Antoine Roquentin's nausea of Sartre) and brings back Emma to her inability to love and as a consequence to a catatonic inactivity and lastly, and sadly, to her suicide.
[Reality may not be the ‘best’ but acceptance of it (including ourselves) brings us to a place from where we can grow spiritually and not be static in the addiction of ‘wanting to feel good’ at all costs, our life included and reach our full potential].
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