Why do great people sometimes fail in most unexceptional ways.

I think that one needs to view total personality as a conisisting of
various levels. To grow a person rises from level to level. As an example, one can use a ladder of physical, psychological, social, religious and spiritual, or if you wish, nefesh, ruach, neshama, chaya/ yechida. At each level one may leave unfinished business before beginning to work on the higher level; however, such business needs to be ultimately completed, or else one can succumb to a much lower temptation than the level on which one currently resides and spends most of his time and awareness. A good layout of such a system is Beyond the Ego, see
http://www.judaicaenterprises.com/Product-Print.asp?product=bk-ci-beyond

When a great man fails in a most lowly way, it is often the failure
of fixing a perception, thought pattern or behavior pattern from a
much lower level. They are what I mean by "unfinished business". These may have been carried over from the past, have been deliberately left over to be addressed later, or even be a common heritage of all humans. You can call it collective unconscious, neuro-linguistic programming or plain netios and taavos. Even a great person can trip over these low lying objects. To those outside, the matter appears surprising and incomprehensilbe, according to the apparent great stature of the man. However, this is only because we are aware only of higher levels where he spends most of his time, but not of the unfinished work which he left behind and which now tripped him up.

Comments

[yitz..]

I was thinking you would have mentioned something about 'ezer k'negdo' as a direct response and functional patch for exactly this type of problem.

A spouse is someone who is supposed to keep alerting you to your unfinished business.. among other things.

[avakesh]

A good point. Some people are zokeh to that in hapiness and joy and others through discord and criticism. It is, or should be always be, a learning experience. May we be zokeh to the former and not the latter.

See, http://www.avakesh.com/2006/09/accepting_insul_1.html