This is a special post for quick takes by DirectedEvolution. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
We do things so that we can talk about it later.
I was having a bad day today. Unlikely to have time this weekend for something I'd wanted to do. Crappy teaching in a class I'm taking. Ever increasing and complicating responsibilities piling up.
So what did I do? I went out and bought half a cherry pie.
Will that cherry pie make me happy? No. I knew this in advance. Consciously and unconsciously: I had the thought, and no emotion compelled me to do it.
In fact, it seemed like the least-efficacious action: spending some of my limited money, to buy a pie I don't need, to respond to stress that's unrelated to pie consumption and is in fact caused by lack of time (that I'm spending on buying and eating pie).
BUT. What buying the pie allowed me to do was tell a different story. To myself and my girlfriend who I was texting with. Now, today can be about how I got some delicious pie.
And I really do feel better. It's not the pie, nor the walk to the store to buy it. It's the relief of being able to tell my girlfriend that I bought some delicious cherry pie, and that I'd share it with her if she didn't live a three-hour drive away. It's the relief of reflecting on how I dealt with my stress, and seeing a pie-shaped memory at the end of the schoolwork.
If this is a correct model of how this all works, then it suggests a couple things:
Is that the darks arts? I don't think so. I think this is one area of life where the message is the medium.
I do chalk a lot of dysfunction up to this story-centric approach to life. I just suspect it’s something we need to learn to work with, rather than against (or to deny/ignore it entirely).
My sense is that storytelling - to yourself or others - is an art. To get the reaction you want - from self or others - takes some aesthetic sensitivity.
My guess is there’s some low hanging fruit here. People often talk about doing things “for the story,” which they resort to when they're trying to justify doing something dumb/wasteful/dangerous/futile. Perversely, it oft... (read more)