the ideal identity,The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 318

318 

For the ideal identity, expenditures often tally up to a degree of suffering inversely proportional to the actual loss: the more “irrelevant” and “petty” my forced expenditure is to the imagined perfection, the more energy I squander in ranting and railing against it. For the real identity, however, such unavoidable expenditures are never irrelevant or in any way detrimental, and this is because they are unavoidable. Being unavoidable, they are necessary. And being necessary they cannot be irrelevant.

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