some days are harder than others

One of many scary thoughts is that reality does not care if you understand it or not. For example, try to really understand how big the universe is, or even the distance from here to the nearest star. Or, try to understand that time provides a physical constraint on the universe in the same way as does length, width, and depth. In our evolutionary history, we would have had no need to understand distances between stars, and I suspect that’s why it’s so hard to really understand now. We never needed to develop the ability to think in those terms. We also had no need to understand time in a theoretical sense, we only needed to understand how to operate within its constraints. Fish do not understand water, but they understand how to move within it.

Humans have the capacity for what’s called “emotion focused coping.” That is, we’re probably better than any other species at thinking about something from multiple points of view. This is why we’re effective (relatively) in social behaviour, we have the capacity to understand the world from not only our own point of view, but also from the points of view of others. In this way we can reframe reality so we feel better about it - we can see a husband that most other people would call lazy, and call him relaxed. We also know how to change our emotional state relatively directly – if we feel anxious, we can use a drink or a smoke to kill off that anxiety, for a while. Reality is patient, and is willing to wait for you.

What really, really sucks is when the reality is so bad that we can’t reframe it. Did you ever catch yourself watching coverage of the big tsunami and thinking, “If it were me, I would have gotten away, I would have known to run.” Emotion focused coping. We don’t want to be mortal, and will make ourselves believe, somehow, that we would have been better, or smarter, or faster than the people who died. Reality doesn’t care if you underestimate its power.

You know, I almost apologized for how depressing this post is, there is an urge within me to write some kind of happy ending, or at least a yes, but. And it’s true, life is not always as depressing as this post sounds. But sometimes it is, and it can be scary how little room there is in public discourse for honest, negative emotion. When people ask you how you’re doing, how often are you honest? How does it make you feel to say “fine” when you’re not? Why are we so scared of each other’s fear?