Summary: To live and work for the sake of realizing potential (that in individuals as well as groups, families, organizations). That is what comes to mind with the above statement. Vitam Impendere Vero (latin): would be to live/work for the sake of truth.
Would this distinction be very close to the distinction between the ideal and the real?
To live for the sake of potential is a special case of making the best out of a present state of affairs (as a whole) or of an individual. A special case, I say, because making the best of involves an attempt to change. The issue is “into what” and “from what”. If there is a resemblance, an affinity, between the “is” and the “might be”, and if the might be is more complicated, more evolved, i.e., a more complicated and powerful expression of whatever quality is involved, then this might be realization of potential. — A good thing. Not easy thing but a good thing.
If, on the other hand, there is no resemblance between the “into what” and “out of what”… it might be a case of “can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear”. That is, in the mind of the quoted analyst, there is too little of the essence of the “into what” or there is something inherent in the “from what” which is actively opposed to, against the “to what” for the transformation to occur.
