“Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures”
Oscar Wilde
This quote reminds me of that Paul McCartney quote:
"In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make." In the end the faith you take is equal to the faith you make. In the end the consistency you take is equal to the consistency you take. I think Wilde was right, our connection to our faith has a big play on our emotions, where we place our faith, our support - in ourselves or in others, inside our self with our own spirit or outside ourselves with an omniscient God.
I looked for a quote that spoke of both faith and consistency as these have been my topics for the last 60 days. This quote bespeaks the humanness of us as a species, despite our natural perfection and its accompanying amnesia. It also speaks of the drill sergeant in my head who aims at some sort of robotic perfection "I will have big faith and be forever consistent never swaying from my goal." The sergeants stern manner and inability to apply the Buddhist principles of abandoning suffering fulfills Wilde's prediciton.
Anyone who knows me knows that I grappled with faith for years and now spend more time grappling with the latter. Overall, I like what Wilde says but I'm not crazy about the word failure, it's so 19th century. I prefer to think of it as a "confession of egos" or a "confession of humanness." Still, it's a beautiful quote. And that's coming from someone who until recently could not stand to make mistakes.
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