Yesterday I’ve read Tudor OCTAVIAN: În sus şi în jos | Jurnalul National (in Romanian).
There are two characters in the story:
- A. A person which tries to have success (unnamed) – what he does good is that the person persists; what he does bad it persists in such a way that it is at the borderline between usual behavior and self promotion; he also seems to lack talent;
- B. Tudor OCTAVIAN, the author of the story – what he does good is that he tries to create an example; what he does wrong is that he says that the person above does it wrong.
Let me give an argumentation of the last affirmation:
- The essence of the article, to me: Romania may have a lot of things, but it doesn’t have too much of „persistence”; Tudor OCTAVIAN seems to say that person A persists too much, tries too hard; sorry, this is the essence of life – trying; some old people tend to look at opportunities and only see the problems – „Oh, you can’t do that, I’ve tried it, it fails; I’ve seen it happen, I’m an old man; you’ll fail, don’t try it; stop it”; other persons, like person A, keep on trying, no matter what;
- What person A does wrong is that it doesn’t listen to feed-back; surely, he has been rejected and told he isn’t that good;
- Another thing that person A does wrong is trying to improve on the wrong thing – promotion is good, but instead of trying to promote an idea better, why not work on the idea itself? So work on creating something worthwhile, and only then focus on promoting it better;
- Another thing that person A does wrong is, despite what Tudor OCTAVIAN says, is not trying that hard; trying harder would mean bigger feed-back, more rejection (perhaps) and, thus, a bigger chance of realizing you may be on the wrong path; so, the problem may not be only „Oh, you’re trying too hard”, but, instead „You’re not trying hard enough”;
- What Tudor OCTAVIAN does wrong it that he doesn’t offer feed-back; instead of telling the person „hey, you do wrong on this and that, you should be instead focusing on this and that”, he writes an article; why? The person doesn’t get any help from this;
- Another thing – there are things which break rules (are unethical, illegal, immoral, … – you get the picture); and there are things which are personal preference – „Oh, I don’t like this”; in my opinion, person A does nothing very wrong to break a rule; sure, some people may not like the fact that person A promotes itself; „Oh, I don’t like it when you try to promote yourself to editors”; OK, but every writer should do this; it’s natural; person A doesn’t do, according to the editorial, anything wrong; perhaps some people may be offended, but I don’t think they’re right; person A writes something – OK, he has the right to speak about this; if Tudor OCTAVIAN likes a color, it’s his business; if he tries to present this as an universal model, by setting an example – now that’s everybody’s business;
- A failure of logic may help demonstrate the thing above – person A tries to promote something and he fails to have success; the logical conclusion is not, as Tudor OCTAVIAN puts it – „Oh, he shouldn’t promote it”; no, that’s a faulty logic; the problem is the content, not the promotion; person A should focus on writing better; read my explanation of this;
According to the examples in the article, you can age in two ways:
- You can say „I’ll try it so hard, that even if I fail, my trying will keep on going”;
- You can say „Don’t try it, if the feed-back is that you are failing”;
Surely, a better solution than both of above would be „I’ll try and succeed”; but from the two examples above, I pick the example of person A.
Conclusions: Tudor OCTAVIAN has the skills & the success of a performer, yet he lacks, in the article, the motivation. Person A lacks both the talent & success. Yet his trying to succeed is, to me, the better example. To me, failure is an option. Not trying is not.