Must we fulfil our potential?

The Shrink

A feeling that we haven’t quite lived up to our potential can come to haunt even the most accomplished among us. We blame ourselves for the gap between what we think we are capable of and what is actually happening in our lives, believing that with a little more foresight or application we really could have perfected our achievements.

But it is unfair to ourselves not to take the situation into account. We don’t exist in a vacuum, and our circumstances can be more or less conducive to flourishing. In a different context we might have been able to develop certain talents and qualities more. Perhaps the conditions were not right for them to grow in the life we actually had.

Potential does not apply only to our achievements as a scientist or writer or businessperson. There is also a potential to develop wisdom as human beings, friends or partners, and it’s not always possible to devote our energies to all these tasks equally. Many high achievers, for instance, will readily admit they haven’t become the best partners they could have been.

Potential is not one undifferentiated thing, and neglecting one potentiality often means that different ones are developed. We may notice only the failure, but loss in one direction could well mean gain in another. An unfulfilled potential in competitive running can have its counterpart in a fulfilled domestic life and vice versa.

Considering our limitations, we can never become the best we can in every aspect of our life, so cultivating some abilities always means letting others wilt. In that sense, a feeling of having left something unfulfilled is just part of the human condition.

So that nagging feeling of not having lived up to our potential is most constructively interpreted as an implicit statement of value. Expressing a desire to develop certain areas in ways we have so far neglected can help us to steer our actions towards a different, more fulfilling course.

The Sage

If I told you I could see into the future, you would be justified in thinking I was mad, deluded or a con artist. Yet when it comes to potential, we all seem to have a tremendous confidence in our abilities as seers. Almost everyone thinks they know what their potential is, and many think they can spot it in others, even though by definition whether or not it really exists depends on the development of something that is not yet there. To say someone has the potential to be a great tennis player, for example, is to assume that they are not a great tennis player yet.

No precognition is necessary when we are talking of nothing more than a fully formed but latent ability, such as the potential to stop watching the cricket and go prune the roses instead. But when we are thinking about as yet undeveloped abilities, turning potentiality into actuality usually involves a much higher degree of uncertainty than common talk of potential assumes.

First of all, there are any number of reasons why we might simply fail to make real what is only possible. Resolve, emotional resources or circumstances might fail us.

Second, we might just be wrong. Many aspiring artists, for example, have at some stage to deal with the harsh truth that they are merely quite good and do not have what it takes to be truly exceptional. Potential that appears unlimited to youth may look more finite when seen through more experienced eyes.

Jean-Paul Sartre denounced potential for the false comfort it gives us through thoughts of what we could have been if things had been different. To dwell on potential is to define ourselves negatively, in terms of what we are not, rather than positively, for what we are. We too readily assume we know what we could be, or could have been when “reality alone is reliable”. No one can see the future or alternative pasts. Potential left undeveloped is nothing more than a hypothetical ability that belongs in our dreams, not as a ghostly presence in our actual lives.

The Shrink & The Sage live together in south-west England