Denial is a Survival Skill



A friend gave me a refrigerator magnet some years ago that reads: Denial is a God-given survival skill. I was at the time trying to be rigorously honest with myself and others to everyone's dismay. But since having the responding magnet afixed to my refrigerator door I have considered the times that denial is to be just that - a survival skill.

The Sioux City United Airlines crash 20 some years ago is one such example. The pilot and his co-pilot and another United Airlines instructor ignored that they were in a no-win situation with the hydraulics out and managed to get Flight 232 to the ground with more that 2/3's of the passengers surviving. Consequently flight simulators stopped programming no-win scenarios. What StarTrek fans know as the Kobayashi Maru. There are times we really don't need to know all aspects of a situation. It is wise at times to whistle in the dark.
I am in denial mode at the moment. My eyes are fixed at a set goal and I am ignoring all that deters me from that goal. The goal is the Red River Fine Arts and Wine Festival June 19th and 20th. And having five more paintings finished and over a dozen framed before then. I am ignoring the neighbors, the fact that the grass needs mowing, the garden weeds, the increasingly cluttered studio - the list can be extended but I will not bore you. I am also ignoring the fact that my set goal of that 5/12 may be impossible. But darn it I am going to get as close as possible!


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  1. 于名于名June 7, 2010 at 9:37 PM

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