Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [40]
When we rediscover the realm of spontaneous, undictated impulse, we naturally begin to work at loosening the stranglehold of universal prescription. But early attempts to regain our spontaneity invariably miscarry in curious ways. Instead of simply permitting ourselves to be guided by impulse, we institute prescriptions of an ever subtler order. Having ceased to ignore the impulse, we pass through a phase of regulating the impulse— that is, of finding laws that describe our impulsive behavior, and then turning these descriptive laws into new prescriptions. After years of eating dinner in an arbitrarily prescribed fashion, we discover that we enjoy the salad more when it comes after the main course. So we change over to a new prescription that ostensibly takes our true impulses into account: “Salads after entrées!”
In this type of regulation, impulse is no longer totally ignored; but it still isn’t permitted to govern actions belonging to its rightful sphere. Instead of directly following our inclinations, we consult a prescriptive rule that’s supposedly “true” to these inclinations. But no function is served by making a rule out of what happens naturally. If it’s true that we always enjoy salads more after the main course, impulse alone will cause us to eat them at the right time. Regulating the impulse is like vowing to continue to breathe. At the very least, it’s a redundant procedure, a waste of effort.
At the worst, regulating the impulse may lead us as far astray as totally ignoring the impulse. For our inclinations aren’t always so predictable as the desire to breathe. After preferring to eat our salad after the entrée for a number of years, we may find our tastes have changed. But if we’re in the habit of consulting the regulations instead of letting impulse rule, we may not notice the change for a long time. Yet because the regulations were originally based on observed patterns of impulsivity, we continue to believe that we’re acting “on impulse.” In this condition we’re even more befuddled than when the impulse was ignored right from the start, for then at least we entertained no such illusions.
Many of us are unable to discriminate between the regulation of impulse and impulsive action itself. We think that we’re doing what comes naturally when in fact we are first noting what comes naturally and then putting it in the form of a rule for better living. We decide that we like company more than solitude, city life more than country life, bright colors more than subdued colors—and then we rigidly adhere to these regulations in the name of pleasing ourselves. If we really did please ourselves, our behavior would change as soon as our inclinations changed. But the regulations based on our inclinations inevitably lag behind. We’re still surrounding ourselves with bright colors and crowds of people in the city long after these things only give us a headache. This is how the regulation of impulse leads to the trap of persistence.
After we’ve seen through the trap of regulating our impulses, we may yet fall into any of three increasingly devious modes of regulation— reflecting the impulse, reading the impulse, and null regulation. Each of these is a type of prescription that masquerades as impulse.
In reflecting the impulse, we give up trying to second-guess the twists and turns that will be taken by our impulsive life. We do not vow to eat our salad either after the main course or before. Instead, we vow that we will do it whenever we wish. We make it into a regulation that we will follow our impulses in this matter. We tell ourselves that we will eat when we are hungry, rest when we are tired, and so on. Now regulations of this type do keep