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By Root 281 0

Having resolved to spend the evening with a book, we’re descended upon by the proverbial bore. The work that went into making the decision was in vain. Nevertheless, a decision was made. We were to have read a book. Hence the bore is not only unexpected and unpleasant—he’s also an interruption. Even if we haven’t yet begun to read, we have to tear ourselves away from the idea of reading this evening. Had we made no plans for the evening, the arrival of the bore would still have been unfortunate. But we would be spared the trouble of canceling a commitment that we made to ourselves. Hence there are at least two reasons for not making plans unless they fulfill a definite need: (1) we waste the time it takes to make them, and then (2) they cause us to resist unexpected turns of fate.

The champion among makers of useless plans is the vertical anticipator, who strives to work out what he will be doing for the rest of his life. We’ve already seen that such monumental overplanning is continually being rendered obsolete by unexpected developments. In addition, vertical anticipation engenders continual resistance to the new. When we have a plan for every moment of every day, no person or process in the world can ever take the initiative toward us without our construing it as an interruption. The more specific our plans, the more passive and mechanical we require the world outside ourselves to be. Having written the script for our conversation with a potential date, we require him or her to deliver the proper lines at the proper time, like a phonograph record. If the opening joke is met with a solemn reply, we’re lost.

When we carry around a scenario for the rest of our life, we’re always busy tearing ourselves away from it.

Resistance in its turn fosters fixation, that is, waiting around until we can resume a blocked activity. One of the reasons we don’t take up something new in these circumstances is that the resumption of the old activity may come upon us suddenly and interrupt our new beginning. If we start to read an interesting article while waiting for our guests, they may arrive before we’ve finished, and then we’ll have to tear ourselves away. By remaining on the same course now—by fixating on the guests’ arrival—we avoid the strain of changing back to it in the future.

But the change needn’t be strenuous. We need only put down the article and go to the door. So long as we don’t uselessly resist change, we are none the worse for having begun something that can’t be finished right away. Half an interesting article is still better than twiddling our thumbs.

In this situation, the fear of a future bout of resistance leads to a present fixation. In the previous section, we saw that resistance was itself encouraged by anticipation. Causal connections of this kind are widespread among mental traps. One trap always seems to lead to another, and the second to a third. Conversely, the elimination of one trap generally helps us to combat several others. We will encounter more of these interconnections in future chapters.

In many ways, resistance is the very opposite of anticipation. The occasion for either trap is a choice between perpetuating the past and moving into a new future. There’s no generally valid solution to this conflict between the two temporal kingdoms. If we barrel into the future too soon, we are anticipating. If we hold back and stay too long with the past, we resist. Anticipating our departure on a trip, we arrive at the airport too soon and must sit and wait. Resisting our departure because we want to finish tidying up before we leave, we arrive too late and miss our flight. The course of events proceeds at its own pace. Whether we get ahead of the Universe or lag behind, we stumble and fall.

We’ve already seen that these contrary impulses—anticipation and resistance—often coexist in a single individual. We resist every deviation from our anticipated scenario for the future. There’s something of a paradox here. How can one and the same breast harbor both the tendency to delve too soon into the future and