I don’t think there is any idea in the Landmark Forum that is both more powerful and more misunderstood than the idea of being unreasonable. A Facebook page about Landmark led me to this blog, which shares how the idea of being unreasonable made a huge difference in his life when he was dealing with having cancer.
The way we usually mean it, calling someone ‘unreasonable’ means someone who refuses to recognize reality – someone who is unfair or blind. That’s not what’s being said here. Rather, it literally means being someone who isn’t run by reasons.
You could say that our minds are brilliant analytical machines. They can look at a hundred pros and cons of a situation, and give you seventy good reasons to do something and thirty good reasons not to. When we are being ‘reasonable’, our actions are dictated by the weight of what the most ‘good reasons’ tell us to do. In general, this is a very useful way to operate; it’s probably what’s had us survive and thrive as a species.
However, there can be a couple of problems with this approach to life. One is that our minds are excellent at coming up with reasons to support our current worldview. For instance, if I want to do something but I’m afraid to do it, our mind can come up with a thousand reasons to justify our fear, to say why it can be done later, and generally justify why we should keep doing what we’re doing. You could say one of our mind’s jobs is to have us avoid danger, so if something looks in any way risky, our mind will find many reasons not to pursue something.
So while the mind is good at maintaining things the way they are, the reasons our mind comes up with are often not useful when you really want something outside of the way things are predictably going. In such a case, being ‘unreasonable’ is what’s called for. This doesn’t mean ignoring reasons and facts, but simply not being a slave to them.
To put it in real world terms, the blogger was dealing with an aggressive course of chemotherapy for his cancer and barely had the strength to walk. Nonetheless, as soon as his course of treatments were over, he registered for the Ride To Conquer Cancer, a 260 kilometre ride to raise money for a Cancer charity. His health gave him a host of reasons not to do this, but it was what he wanted, for such a bold act filled him with excitement and optimism and gave him a future.
He hired a personal trainer, went to work, and had a life-altering experience, a new sense of what he could accomplish, as he crossed the finish line. It never would have happened if he was a slave to his reasons.
I would go so far as to say that when we get really inspired by someone, it’s because they went beyond what they thought they were capable of, beyond what one could reasonably expect of them to achieve something extraordinary. This is why I find Olympic athletes so inspiring – they have a dedication and commitment to extraordinary performance that goes far beyond what would be considered an acceptable or ‘reasonable’ effort.
Go read Tim Stringer’s blog for yourself.
