Thursday, May 31, 2012

About Me

This is my desk at work:


Before I go any further, let me answer the obvious questions:
  • Yes, that's dinner you see there
  • I know Easter was almost two months ago
  • If you haven't tried Li Hing Mui, you haven't lived
Moving on, this is my desk at home. Look closely and you'll catch my elegant dining table in front too:


I spend most of my waking hours in one of the two places. As a consequence, I’ve gained 15 pounds since coming to work at my company five years ago.

Here’s the thing - and I’ve actually thought about it, even drawing schematics and thinking through the specific wording I would use - I could try to save myself. I could figure out how to construct a time machine. I imagine it as a glistening aluminum box, covered with electrical wires, pneumatic hoses, and pressure gauges.

I would set the clock on my contraption for the terrible, fateful year that I joined my firm. My past self would be lying on the couch around midnight, watching reruns of Law & Order SVU when I’d burst into being, terrible to behold, covering the living room in a shower of sparks. I'd wear some kind of futuristic get-up, to lend my future self an air of credibility. Maybe something silver. Probably boots. Definitely a jumpsuit. I’d grab my past self by the shoulders, yank myself/her up off the couch, and try to shake some sense into us.

“Look, you idiot” I’d scream, “If you don’t get off your @ss, you're still gonna be in exactly the same miserable pathetic place in 2012!”

The thing is, I know exactly what would happen. After the initial shock and the uncomfortable silence that followed, my past self would look down in confusion. She/I would say, "I recognize those boots ... " and try to curl up on the couch again. So I'd leave. Get back in my silver box and go home. My past self would stew over it instead of sleeping that night. But by morning she/I would have accepted her/my fate.

Now this might surprise some of you, but it doesn't me.

There’s a psychological concept called learned helplessness. Here’s generally how the classic set of experiments (Martin Seligman et al.) went:





Poor Dog 3 has learned that there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop the painful experience, so he might as well just suffer through it. 

"Okay, that's a horribly depressing story", you now might say, "but how exactly did this happen to you?"

Funny you should ask. I've been doing some research over the past few weeks, and I think I might have an idea ... well, hang on - unfortunately I hear someone coming, so that's a story for next time ...

No comments:

Post a Comment