Sour grapes and Sweet Lemons
The story of fox and the grapes
A fox gazes longingly at a beautiful bunch of grapes hanging from the high branch of a tree, his mouth watering. He jumps to reach them, but misses by a long way. He tries again and again, but each time it is in vain.
Sitting down he looks at the grapes in disgust. ‘What a fool I am,‘ he says, ‘wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth the effort.’
The moral of the fable is that many pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
This seems fair enough, though it is worth asking how our lives would feel if we didn’t play this mental trick on ourselves — we might not go in constant state of resentment because we can’t get the things we desire within the time that we set for ourselves.
The opposite phenomenon to sour grapes is often called ‘sweet lemons’, where we ‘decide’ to put a positive spin on a negative experience.
Both these mental tricks are types of ‘regret minimisation’ - given the chance, our brain will do its best to lessen any feelings of regret, though it does need a plausible alternative narrative to do this.