If a person has decided to pursue the impossible, I see three stages of development: unhappiness, the impossibility of the impossible, and escape.
In the first stage, we accept that there is an objective reality and if a person lives in it, they know that there are impossible things. If a person pursues something impossible despite this, they cannot achieve it. Accordingly, if a person lives in reality and pursues the impossible, there is no way they can be happy.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov examines this problem through the prism of justice. Ivan Karamazov fails to find it, which leads him to spiritual and mental breakdown. The inability to reconcile reality with his ideals punishes him with absolute despair. This also happens to Flaubert’s character, Madame Bovary. She, for her part, is obsessed with the idea of beauty and romance. She searches for it unsuccessfully in the people around her, but manages to find it only in books. As a result, she takes her own life.
Following the wording of the expression, this would mean that such an approach to life is unnatural and must be “punished.” So what is impossible, really, and who determines it? Are justice and romanticism truly unattainable? It was once thought that the idea of humans flying was impossible. Then the Wright brothers disproved this with the first aircraft heavier than air. But did they really disprove it? Ultimately, the process of rising into the air is performed by a machine designed for this purpose, not by the human organism.
Accordingly, concepts depend on interpretation and the possibility of being reinterpreted. This brings us to the second option when faced with seemingly unattainable goals: there is no objective reality, and the entire statement, as well as all other statements ever made, are invalid. This case was studied by George Berkeley, who formulated the principle “Esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived), according to which objects have no independent existence outside our perception or consciousness. In other words, accepting the subjectivity of reality, as Berkeley sees it, can be a way to free oneself from the melancholy caused by impossible aspirations for the absolute.
The third option is that there is an objective reality and one does not live in it. Then one does not know that there are impossible things, and pursuing them will not bring despair.
This argument can be supported by the fact that during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study with 64 people who were experiencing constant stress. The participants were divided into two groups: one group of 32 people received a placebo, while the other received no treatment.
What was unique about the study was that the people in the placebo group knew that the pills did not contain any active ingredients. They took the pills twice a day, having been informed in advance about the possible positive effects of placebo therapy and its mechanism of action. After the two-week experiment, the participants who took the placebo reported a significant reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression levels compared to the group that did not receive treatment.
The explanation for this is that the brain is capable of triggering the production of hormones that block pain, known as opioids.
A century ago, few doctors dared to make a direct connection between the state of the mind and the body. However, research in recent years has shown that at the molecular and cellular level, there is a direct relationship between the nervous, hormonal, and immune systems.
Therefore, a person is absolutely capable of shaping their physical reality if they decide to do so or if it is suggested to them. In such a scenario, whatever a person pursues will not lead them to melancholy and despair, unless the object of pursuit is precisely those feelings.
What do the three options above have in common? Choice. In the context of the impossible, there are again three outcomes: nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. Yes, Einstein turned to God at the end of his life, but Nietzsche did the opposite. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and after his death, followed by that of his younger brother, the seed of doubt was sown in young Friedrich. This seed sprouted in Sartre and was left in the sun by Camus. Each of them made their own choice about their way of life, which grew into a major philosophical movement. And they were just people. In this, we are like them.