MIssing the Mark

In fact, the mark only appears after and because we have failed to hit it.

When we say something and realise 'that's not what I meant', the 'what I meant' is produced retroactively. That's to say: it's not that you first have a fully formed and intended meaning in mind which the ensuing utterance fails to embody. Au contraire, the failure to embody makes you aware of the 'what you meant.' Your 'intention' is defined and clarified by your failure to give it form. Similarly when we say of some situation or experience 'this isn't what i want', it is only via the failed experience or situation that the 'what I want' has been disclosed to me. The negation (not what I want) in a sense precedes and generates that which it negates.

The 'subjective' - our wants and intentions etc - is a deposit, a residue left behind through various misses and failures. That this residuum is then regarded as the precious and original core of our being, that we need to be in touch with, is an optical illusion we seem unable to dispense with. Hence our default causal picture: of a subject whose intentions and meanings find realisation (or not) in speech and action.