Emotional bias
In today’s writing, I will start with a little story. Around a month ago, I bought a fish tank and a little goldfish for my daughter’s second birthday. Obviously, I am taking care of the fish and I am responsible for its survival by changing the water, setting up the filters, feeding, etc. Firstly, I thought about it as a chore and I was even disappointed knowing how long the fish can live. The weeks passed by. I was getting more and more used to this responsibility and I enjoyed the results of my work. Suddenly, a few days ago the fish started to behave weirdly. It floated a bit, looked a bit weak. We worried about it but I thought that this is just a fish, so if something happens we either replace it so my daughter won’t be sad about losing her friend or we explain to her that the fish went on holiday and we abandon the idea of the fish tank. No hard feelings until one night I woke up and I saw the fish floating on the surface… I was sure it was dead so I prepared to flush it before my daughter wakes up. Fortunately, before I caught the fish it moved a bit, so I saw it was still alive. I thought I will wait till morning and decide what to do. From this moment I started really care about the fish. Was looking up what could go wrong, what I could have missed and how I can fix it. I found out that despite the pandemic the pet shop that sold me the fish opens at 9 am so I can go there and test the water. This night I dreamed about the fish tank and few times during the night I woke up checking if the fish is still alive… It became super important to me to keep it alive out of a sudden. Consciously, I explained to myself that it is just a fish so I should just go to sleep and try to help it if possible, but if it will be a lot of effort just replace it. At the same time my subconscious, emotional self was pushing toward helping the fish no matter what it takes. I woke up in the morning went for a surf and as soon they opened the pet shop I went there to check the water and ask for advice. It turned out it was most likely a lack of oxygen, so I bought something to increase the level of this gas in the water and applied this to the fish tank. My, or rather our goldfish feels better now so it was most likely that. Uff… I saved the fish, looks like the end of the story.
After all that, I started thinking why suddenly I started caring about the fish that much. Why I paid extra 60 dollars without even thinking, went to the pet shop first thing in the morning to save its life, and most importantly, why during the night I was dreaming about leaking fishtanks and dead fish. Based on my thinking process I believe I care about it because I fear failure. I invested some time and effort into the whole idea of the fish and took its life very personally. I coupled its well-being with my success. If the fish dies I would take it as a failure. I can’t even take care of a fish, nobody should give me any serious responsibility. There was obviously something I misunderstood or didn’t read so the fish is dying. Those types of thoughts hidden behind the compassion for the fish dominated my thought process and I couldn’t get out of this spiral. It is very interesting how emotional investment can make us care about things that in theory we should take lightly. I started realizing how silly it was and finally, once I talked to my dad it hit me in the face. I was telling the sick fish story to my dad explaining how weirdly I started to worry about the small animal while my dad was at work at hospice… He is surrounded by dying people that nobody can help and that are just trying to spend their last days with maximum dignity. I remembered a book that I recently read and was basically an interview with a priest that founded hospice himself. I thought about stoics “memento mori” and that death is a natural part of life and I realized how silly my thoughts were even more. In the book that I mentioned Jan Kaczkowski pointed that people working with dying patients often take their survival personally and it is very dangerous for both sides. I don’t want to compare this situation to my sick fish but my thought process was very similar. I think at the end of the day I didn’t think about the fish itself but about my own failure.
Raising the level of abstraction, I strongly believe that very often our emotional entanglement is making the problems much harder to resolve. Often is better to not take things personally, at the end of the day if a project fails it is the project itself that suffered the most. You can move on and you should, taking responsibility for your actions and critically thinking about the situation itself not only how it impacted your own feelings.
