Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [19]
Working in vain is closely related to the trap of persistence. As with overworking and amplification, the difference is temporal. When we persist, we work toward a goal that has already lost its value. When we work in vain, we strive toward a goal that will lose its value before we acquire it. We can never know that we are working in vain until after the fact. The trap is to increase the probability of this event for no purpose.
Certain circumstances seem to invite trapped thinking of more than one sort. One of these occurs when we face a danger that we’re powerless to avert. In this situation, we may uselessly worry about our looming misfortune, in which case we fall into the trap of fixation. We may also commit a form of anticipation that causes us to work in vain. In pre-resignation, we work on our thoughts and feelings in such a way that we’re able to accept the feared event with equanimity. Threatened by a visit from a tiresome relative, we comfort ourselves with the thought that the evening will soon be over, that tomorrow is another day, that suffering builds character. In short, we resign ourselves to our fate—before it overtakes us.
Now pre-resignation is not quite so certainly useless as mere worrying. If the worst does come to pass, we will feel better for having resigned ourselves. But the worst may not come to pass— our relative may come down with the flu—and then we will have made ourselves gloomy for nothing. Our work will have been in vain.
Whether such work is a trap depends, as with all activities geared toward a future end, on whether it can be postponed without penalty. It may be that the impending calamity will leave us in such an enfeebled state that we’ll no longer have the inner resources to accept our fate. In that case, we have to assess the relative advantage of resignation before the fact against the possibility of having worked in vain. But it’s usually just as easy to resign ourselves after the fact as before. When our relative is firmly installed in our living room, cocktail in hand, we can excuse ourselves for a moment, go into the bedroom, and make our peace as well as we can. Certainly, if we make a habit of always preparing ourselves for the worst, we’ll be working in vain far more often than we need. There’s usually time enough to accept our fate when it finally overtakes us. Instead of making ourselves perpetually gloomy by always assuming the worst, we would do better to make no assumptions at all and simply continue to live our life. If the worst happens, then we can see how we’ll get through it.
Anticipation has a major characteristic in common with the trap of fixation. In both traps, we needlessly concern ourselves with the future. The difference is that in fixation we simply dwell on the future without attempting to do anything constructive about it. In anticipation, our activity is intended to be constructive; but it’s premature and therefore liable to overworking, preworking, and working in vain. If we worry that our missing wallet won’t turn up at the lost and found, we are fixating. If we make plans to replace our lost driver’s license and library card before getting to the lost and found, we’re anticipating. Unlike mere worrying, these plans may prove to be useful. But we would do better to postpone their consideration until