STORIES MAKE SENSE
I write stories, which means I spend all day in a universe where everything happens for a reason. It’s so great.
In a traditional story (anything not absurd or surrealist), everything has a cause and effect. Scenes build on the ones before until you get a climactic end that obeys logic.
It’s so satisfying.
It’s arguably what our brains do every minute of the day: make meaning out of a very chaotic, complex reality.
Everything needs to have a cause and effect when they’re happening and credit and blame when they’re over. Whether it’s ourselves or the stars, the gods, fate, or blind luck. Whatever it is – there’s a REASON.
WHAT IF ALL OF THAT IS WRONG?
There’s a great deal more happenstance, nonsense, and chance in our lives than I think any of us are comfortable with.
There’s a story I learned whose origins have been lost to time, though it’s been variously attributed to Buddhism and Taoism of an old farmer and chance. I used to absolutely hate it.
An old farmer got a horse. And all of his neighbors praised him and told him how lucky he was.
His response: we’ll see.
(Or sometimes: “Maybe,” or “Who knows,” depending on the translation.)
When his son fell off the horse and broke his leg, all of his neighbors commiserated with him.
His response: We’ll see.
Then war broke out and all of the oldest sons were drafted into the army except for his son because of his leg, and all of his neighbors said how lucky he was… You get the idea.
The specific events that happen to this guy also change with translation, but it’s always tragedy and triumph in succession.
WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?
I hated the story because I knew it was absolutely right, but there was never the next step of what to do with that information.
If you begin to live by acknowledging how little control you have, how do you make any moves at all?
In the Drunkards Walk, How Randomness Rules Our Lives, Leonard Mlodinow describes one study about popular music that shows even when we get success, it’s still not worth much credit or blame.
Eight groups of people were asked to rate songs they’d never heard before. Some groups saw each other’s ratings and some didn’t.
In the groups that saw others’ ratings, the songs that ended up at the “top of the charts” varied wildly. It turned out that songs that got an early lead when just a few people liked them, shot up in popularity at the end. That was the variable that made the difference, not the quality of the song, the work of the artist, or anything else.
The book has oodles more examples of personal success at sports, at stock picking, and more that look no different from randomness once you crunch the numbers.
Now, the vast majority of us are never going to send a song up the charts, but this kind of statistical randomness affects us too in who we date and the jobs we take, and the chances we’re given or not.
I’m not saying the things we do or don’t do don’t matter. If you never leave your house you’re going to stay single. If you never write a song, you’re never going to be on the chart at all.
But the specific way things and actions and decisions play out is a lot closer to random chance than luck.
WHAT DOES WORK?
The story I’ve learned to tell myself about endeavors has two parts:
For one, relax about outcomes.
You can’t really control how things play out, not with negative thinking or positive thinking, hard work, blame, talent, luck, or anything else.
Everything you do has a chance at success and what turns a chance into a sure thing is pretty random and almost certainly not under your control.
For two, get serious about action.
You have to take chances or nothing happens. Again sadly, you can take a bunch of chances and nothing will still happen. That part is not under any of our control, but if you are consistently taking chances, your odds go way up.
It’s like throwing snowballs down a hill in the mountains. It’s very unlikely you’ll cause an avalanche every time. But it’s also very unlikely that they’ll peter to a stop a few feet from you every time either. Over the course of a lifetime, you’ll probably only get one or two avalanches, plus a lot of tiny snowballs, and maybe a few snowmen in between.
In short, you really, really, really cannot get caught up in outcomes. But neither can you stop playing the game. (: