The Simple Reality principle that informs this essay is: identity drives behavior. Anyone wanting to express the identity of their True self must have a profound understanding of the narrative in which they are contained. Don Quixote found himself in a Paradigm-B context and found it wanting.
In Don Quixote, Cervantes was expressing the ideal, the “vision” that although humanity is unconscious, they could wake up and find they had never left the Garden of Eden. “Quixotism is the universal quality characteristic of any visionary action. Acts of rebellion or reform are always … Quixotic for the reformer aims at undermining the existing institution in order to change it … Seeking only ‘truth’ or ‘justice,’ the truly quixotic heroes have an internal vision so strong as to see through the illusion of external appearances. Don Quixote, for example, defies ubiquitous institutions so taken for granted that everyone thinks they are harmless windmills, though they may be threatening giants, inexorable machines destructive of the individual.”[i]
It takes a good deal of courage and a strong commitment to respond to life with our True identity. Five hundred years after Miguel de Cervantes expressed dissatisfaction with the institutions of Spain, the unlikely hero Mike Tyson sensed that his life was not all it could be and that there was more to life than being the heavyweight champion of the world. “This is what the deal is. People just wait for you to grow up and do the right thing. They’re just waiting for you to participate in the improvement of your life as a human being. When are you going to do it?”[ii]
When indeed!
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Supplemental Reading: Identity, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#58 Quixotism
[i] Sturman, Marianne. Don Quixote Notes. Lincoln: Cliffs Notes Inc., 1964, p. 82.
[ii] Merkin, Daphne. “I’ve Learned to Live a Boring Life.” The New York Times Magazine. March 20, 2011, p. 29.
