Day 28: Stiff Collars, Striving, and the Myth of Self-Sufficiency (19th August)

 

The Reading Today

• Daily Theme: The Struggle for Virtue, Learning from Failure, and the Power of Trying Again
• Source Material: Mere Christianity

My Reflection

Reading through this week’s excerpts on chastity has been a challenging experience, forcing me to confront language and concepts that feel far removed from modern sensibilities. Yet in today’s passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis pivots to something universal: the human struggle of attempting something difficult that feels impossible before we begin.

Lewis illustrates this with grounded, physical examples—examinations, learning to skate, surviving wartime, and even wrestling with a stiff collar with cold fingers. That image brought back memories of my own school days, struggling with stiff shirt collars that rubbed my neck raw and trying to master tie knots that felt like impossible philosophical puzzles.

Lewis makes a poignant observation about human grit:

"Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can... After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again."

This echoes an old phrase my grandparents used often: "God loves a trier."

Where I find friction is in his assertion that "we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments." Modern culture places enormous stock on self-reliance and self-confidence; admitting weakness or asking for help is often stigmatised. Lewis argues that reliance solely on our own willpower is fragile, and that failure is our greatest teacher—curing our illusions of self-sufficiency.

His closing remark—that the only fatal mistake is to "sit down content with anything less than perfection"—can easily sound like harsh, demanding perfectionism. Yet at its heart, it is an invitation not to give up. The true failure lies not in falling short, but in resigning ourselves to apathy and refusing to get back up.

Why This Matters

Failure is not an indictment of our character; it is the classroom of experience. Growth does not require immediate perfection, but rather the humility to ask for help and the resilience to keep trying after every stumble.

My Action for Today

Today, I will reject the pressure of harsh perfectionism. When faced with a setback or mistake, I will treat it as a teacher, ask for help where needed, and focus simply on trying again.

Reader Question

Do you find it difficult to ask for help when struggling with personal goals, preferring self-reliance even when it leads to burnout?