Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Is Anyone Here Naturally Calm?
Ladies and Gentlemen of Ricochet, your ordinarily affable morning-in-Paris editor just had a complete meltdown.
Before anyone gets concerned, let me assure you: nothing is wrong. Nothing. No one was shooting at me. No large animal was trying to eat me. There was no fire or famine at the door. I’m in a warm, quiet apartment in the heart of a developed city. There is nothing wrong (beyond my usual concerns about the state of the world).
Except that I tried to update my OS and it didn’t go so well. In fact, it seems to have killed my ancient but usually affable Mac. So I’m typing this on my backup computer, which is very slow and too old to run all the programs I usually use. I can’t get on Slack to chat with the other editors, although I’ve alerted them by e-mail to my temporary incapacity. I’m worried that whatever I’ve done wrong will be expensive to fix.
That’s all that’s wrong. And all of that is is — objectively — what normal people think of as a nuisance, not an emergency, right?
Even as the screen went black and the computer died, I knew, rationally, that this was not a real emergency. I knew that even in a worst-case scenario — even if I’d really, permanently killed my computer (and I probably hadn’t) — everything was backed up. I knew the other editors’ lives did not, in fact, depend on my being on Slack. I even knew they were probably safely abed and completely unworried about me. I knew I could make this right by walking ten blocks to the Apple Store and spending money. Heck, I’ve been needing a new computer for a long time, it might even be fun to get a new one. So nothing about this is a big deal: It can all be fixed. Would that all the world’s problems could be fixed so easily, right?
There was really no good reason at all for my amygdala to send that kind of distress signal to my hypothalamus this morning. But it did. And off to the races it went, telling my adrenal glands to dump epinephrine into my blood and start pushing it to my muscles and heart. Pulse and blood pressure flew up. (Or so I assume, based on what I’ve read about the stress cascade; I wasn’t actually monitoring any of this. Subjectively, though, I pretty much felt the way I assume one would right before being devoured by a shark.)
I’ve calmed down now.
But it took about three hours to talk myself off that ledge, and I’m annoyed with myself. That whole unpleasant this-is-an-emergency internal drill was entirely unnecessary. It didn’t fix the problem and it made me unpleasant to be around. (There’s no one else in my apartment, but I’m capable of being just as annoyed with myself as I would be with anyone else who was pointlessly freaking out over nothing.) And it’s really uncool. I hate being uncool.
I don’t tend to freak out like this, by the way, in real emergencies. When those happen, I get cold and functional until whatever it is has been dealt with, after which I get depressed. If this had been a real emergency, I’d have probably coped just fine; then I’d have filed three impeccably-proofread columns about how I narrowly avoided being devoured by a landshark, submitted the invoices, and collapsed into exhaustion and depression for weeks. But computer emergencies — and other small stresses like misplaced keys and unpaid bills — make me freak out in a way real problems don’t.
Why? Is the problem that I conduct so much of my life online that somehow my brain has really confused my ability to connect at high-speed to the Internet with my ability to breathe? Is the problem some other, deeper, existential anxiety that gets displaced into something trivial because I can’t confront the real problem?
Insight, anyone? Are any of you the same way? If so, have you been able to change it?
I’ve often suspected that the naturally calm people who instinctively say things like, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” are just biologically different, and that it isn’t realistic for me to expect my personality to change all that much.
But perhaps someone here has become better at dealing with life’s smaller stresses.
If so, do you have any advice for me?
(PS: Think twice before installing El Capitan. Just sayin.’)
Published in General, Humor
Not only am I preternaturally calm, it was also something that once hurt me professionally. My last job involved a lot of “crisis management,” and I had to deal with a lot of people in stressful situations who were losing it. My calm demeanor was interpreted by my (sociopathic Hillary-clone) boss as indifference.
So it’s the psychological equivalent of allergies: When our environment is so clean and sterile that the immune system doesn’t have real threats to attack, it preys on itself. When we don’t have major threats to our lives, our mind works itself up over littler things.
My grandmother was kind of like this. She always needed something or someone to worry about. Once she started volunteering with the premature ward at the hospital and had those delicate infants to worry over regularly, she calmed down about the rest.
So long as you didn’t get arrested I figure no biggie. Or is that just me?
I am pretty calm-tempered about most of life, at least in dealing with difficult people and situations. I had been, my whole adult life. Friends remarked on it. They never saw me upset or angry.
Then I had a teenaged daughter. My wife hardly believes that I ever had that reputation in the first place.
I second the comments on how our brains WANT to freak out now and again.
As for computers: I have no intention of upgrading until I must. My computer works. After a misspent youth of upgrade-itis, I am cured.
Dr. Berlinski,
..aahh…harrumph…it reminds me when I was a young man. We were camping out in Yosemite in the cheep $.50 a night campground. From there we could watch the rich guys make it half way up El Capitan and get tired. They’d just hang there for a couple hours and then the helicopter would come by and pick’em off the side. We laughed and laughed….huh….wait a minute……oh….you have a MAC!!! It’s an operating system isn’t it. Sorry, never mind.
Dr. Berlinski you’ll never really know what’s on a man’s mind.
Regards,
Jim
Twelve years ago, my wife was a physics post-doc doing computer simulations of gravitational waves (she still does that, but she’s a professor, now). Her research group used Linux. At the time, I gather that Linux was even more of a mishmash of half-completed drivers and abandoned add-ons than it is today, and the post-docs in her group tended to move on to jobs as system administrators because of the full-time computer skills they had to develop. She once spent weeks, trying to add a second monitor and a video card.
Full and complete agreement. Mind boggling.
Whatever the weather, when your confuser disdains your mortal coil, for whatever reason, go for a walk. Allow your eyes to extend their focus, breathe the hopefully fresh air, and do one simple good deed while wandering aimlessly. Guaranteed.
I generally appear calm, but I did client and project de-escalation for years…after running McDonald’s in downtown and SE Washington, DC> I would have people ask me how I stayed so calm…it wasn’t that I was calm, but that I often prayed for it (silently, of course).
Part of it is nakedly tactical: I’ve learned to channel my temper to great effect. When I get pissed, people take it much more seriously than if I popped off all the time.
My philosophy on upgrades is to either commit to beta program testing–it’ll be your bugs that are fixed–or allow other
suckersvictimsusers find the problems.This is why well-meaning hobos are so happy.
Sometimes I am so calm I wonder if I have the proper allotment of feeling genes. Generally though I think that logically it’s a waste of time to freak out. Freaking out makes me feel bad and I hate feeling bad.
When we found out that rats were nesting in the attic my only reaction was “how much is it going to cost?”.
To Tom’s point in a serious way…
In artificially elevating the importance of ourselves, we smallify our world. We travel from coast to coast in a matter of hours for business and marvel at our careers and the achievements of man. But rarely do we sit by a stream and look at the stars and marvel at the insignificance of our efforts and achievements. That second half is equally important. Perhaps more.
By all means, take a walk.
I’ve learned that actual emergencies don’t leave enough time for prevarication. I have to decide quickly and act quickly. This has served me well in flash floods, tornados, and earthquakes.
Sharp inconveniences freak me out considerably more because the stakes are so low, i.e. I have the luxury of freaking out or getting incandescently angry. The lizard brain gets to go for a walk.
Computer problems short of actual hardware failure because MTBF (he says as he types this on a late-2010 MacBook Air running El Capitan) quickly push me into “incandescently angry” because I write software for a living, so I know there’s no excuse for them.
Nature vs. nurture: very little can push you into the “nature” column more effectively than being adopted and being found by your birth mother and half sisters as an adult.
Sounds like I might have wanted to ask everyone here, “Should I try updating to El Capitan” before pressing the button, no?
I suspect that Ye Olde Computer’s never going to work right again. I suspect this based on the fact that it was old and already beset by problems (broken screen, keyboard, touchpad; slow; the search function didn’t work; half its parts had already been replaced).
The AppleCare program expired years ago, and I figure it has entered its scheduled obsolescence. My attempt to update the system was just the final straw.
I’m thinking trying to get it fixed will end up costing me a significant chunk of what buying a new machine would — and I’ll still need to buy a new one within a year, so I may as well just bite the bullet and get one.
Am I thinking straight? I’ll run this decision past all of you before doing anything impulsive.
It also just occurred to me that in actual emergencies, you do something with those fight-or-flight hormones: like fighting or fleeing. So they’re discharged. And the emergency, if actual, occupies your mind rather more than the question, “Why am I stressed out, given that this isn’t really a big deal?” So it may be that in fact I have the same physical reaction to real emergencies, but I don’t notice it because, you know, my building is shaking and whoa, maybe collapsing! I have to get seven cats out of here! or, goodness, those men mean to kill me, I think I’d better skedaddle! …
Yep.
No excuse! None! Off with their heads!
I’ll bet. What was that like?
Yeah, that’s what the naturally calm people always say: Why freak out? It’s a waste of time and you’ll just feel bad. The logic is irrefragable, but also irrelevant if you’re having those emotions. I can control the behavior associated with them, but the underlying emotions don’t seem to be under my conscious control — or at least, no more than a lot of emotions that are in a sort-of reflex zone. Or rather, I can consciously calm myself down, as I did this morning, but the initial emotional response and all the physiological things associated with it seem to happen before I can talk myself out of it.
Dr. Berlinski,
Obviously, I’ve been insensitive to your needs. How about some nice cat poetry. I’m sure this will calm your frayed nerves.
https://youtu.be/4HcAvP5dDaU
Regards,
Jim
Here is what my wonderfully phlegmatic Dutch husband believes about high-strung me (and helps me believe about myself): It is the flip side of sensitivity and an intuitive gift.
The flip side of natural calm is obtuseness.
Nobody’s perfect, nobody’s complete. We need each other to stay sane, clear-headed, insightful and responsive to the real.
Exactly. BTW, El Capitan installed flawlessly on my late-2010 MacBook Air. In fact, a major reason I use Apple products is their low TCO. Yes, I pay more for them up front… knowing I’ll still be using them in five years. The 13″ MacBook Air is $1,000 / 5 years = $200 / year = $16.67 / month. I’d take that action if I were you.
Oooh, goody, can’t wait to use that delightful phraseology on my unsuspecting friends. :)
It’s the state you’re in before you get into the state you’re in that gets you in the state you’re in.
If having a bowl of cereal right now is really important then discovering you’re out of milk feels like a crisis.
When my son is building Lego he’ll go bananas if he can’t find the right piece. Because the Lego building is really important to a 7yo.
When you control your regular state, the other state won’t happen.
Of course, you might want it to happen. Like rooting for a team in the World Series or the Super Bowl. It’s not so interesting if you don’t get yourself into a lather. But then you’re crushed when they lose.
You mean you don’t all do that? I’ll have to tell Vrouwe….on second thought….
Nobody should think of their efforts and achievements as insignificant. Human relationships matter.
Like the prospect of being hanged, it focuses the mind wonderfully.
Harsh, I know, but reality is like that. It’s possible to develop correct software, and the tools to do so can be as cost-effective as the tools not to. Software development, like most advances that experience exponential popular uptake, has to shed its pop culture baggage and grow up.
Mostly funny: one sister asking “Why were you the last one off the plane?” by way of introduction (yeah, you’re my sister, all right…) Finishing each other’s sentences like we grew up together. The other sister asking our mother if she wanted her 2nd-floor hospital room curtains closed. “Why? Do you think someone is going to climb up a ladder and look?” Exactly what I would have said! It was quite arresting how matters of personality, sense of humor, and even word choices were uncannily familiar. One caution: if you’re adopted and plan to meet, read about it first—there’s one aspect that can be extremely dislocating and embarrassing if you aren’t prepared for it.
On the plus side they become human again when they enter their 20’s and realize Dad got smart again….
Everyone should because that insignificance is what makes them matter. It’s when we think it matters that they become insignificant.
In answer to the question in your title: nope.
Claire – no time to read fully or thru the comments yet, I’m sure they’re funny…have to get to work, but for God’s sake! New computers are CHEAP nowadays – do you have a French WalMart? WalMart sales are down says Drudge….help them out! I got a new Acer wireless all in one super fast computer from Walmart 2 years ago on sale for $400! It’s awesome – we’re totally wireless in our house with 3 computers and a printer. I take it you don’t have a car in Paris if you have to walk 10 blocks? Order on line – anything can be found for less – my husband can’t find one pair of shoes that suits him in the local 200 stores we have to pick from, but on line the sky’s the limit. Better to spend the money on making your livlihood easier (plus business write off), then paying a doctor or hospital to screw your head back on when it blows off from the venting of steam…..good luck!