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Anticipation
Jun. 20th, 2006 05:21 pmThe other day, Theo and I were playing with magnets and iron filings and he was pouring the latter out of a small container. Or, perhaps more properly put, he was trying to pour the iron filings out. They were clumped together and even upside down, were disinclined to exit the container.
I obverved to Bill that I understood that the Heinz Corporation had recently acquired the company that made the science kit we were using. He paused a moment to consider and then concurred.
*****
A few BIQs ago, Dr. Fernette Eide (http://www.neurolearning.com/ - highly recommended,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siderea, sdorn, anonshadow, dragongstone, and others!) was doing a presentation and she put up a slide of an MRI with LOTS of bright spots on it and noted that this was a slide of Josh's brain.
She went on to explain that no, this was not really Josh's, but it could be - it was the brain of an extrovert before entering a room with a party with lots of friends. The brain anticipates what it expects and prepares for it. This is true with pain, as well. One often suffers more from anticipated pain than from the pain itself.
The problem comes, for me as with many people, with anticipated results that are delayed and delayed. We get ourselves psyched up for them, we look forward to them, and then we are let down by their absence. It is hard to maintain the anticipation well beyond the date or time of expectation. It happens with books and movies, with sporting events, and with far more personal events. When am I getting that promotion, that job offer, that call about a date...
The failure of anticipation hurts more than if you had not expected the thing to start with. Depending on the immediacy of the event, the length of the delay does not have to be very long to leave upset and/or discomfort in its wake. The thing waited for becomes, instead, a double-edged thing. We want a good reason for our disappointments. Sometimes the reasons are good enough to defray the pain; sometimes they are not.
Reversing some of this does not make it better. Prolonged anticipation of a negative event does not reduce the pain, it seems to extend it. A dreaded phone call becomes more dreaded rather than less.
The other kind of reversal, for me, works, but I know it does not for everybody. Getting the news or information earlier is a cause for celebration! I like those sorts of surprises (for the positives, at least).
I obverved to Bill that I understood that the Heinz Corporation had recently acquired the company that made the science kit we were using. He paused a moment to consider and then concurred.
*****
A few BIQs ago, Dr. Fernette Eide (http://www.neurolearning.com/ - highly recommended,
siderea, sdorn, anonshadow, dragongstone, and others!) was doing a presentation and she put up a slide of an MRI with LOTS of bright spots on it and noted that this was a slide of Josh's brain.She went on to explain that no, this was not really Josh's, but it could be - it was the brain of an extrovert before entering a room with a party with lots of friends. The brain anticipates what it expects and prepares for it. This is true with pain, as well. One often suffers more from anticipated pain than from the pain itself.
The problem comes, for me as with many people, with anticipated results that are delayed and delayed. We get ourselves psyched up for them, we look forward to them, and then we are let down by their absence. It is hard to maintain the anticipation well beyond the date or time of expectation. It happens with books and movies, with sporting events, and with far more personal events. When am I getting that promotion, that job offer, that call about a date...
The failure of anticipation hurts more than if you had not expected the thing to start with. Depending on the immediacy of the event, the length of the delay does not have to be very long to leave upset and/or discomfort in its wake. The thing waited for becomes, instead, a double-edged thing. We want a good reason for our disappointments. Sometimes the reasons are good enough to defray the pain; sometimes they are not.
Reversing some of this does not make it better. Prolonged anticipation of a negative event does not reduce the pain, it seems to extend it. A dreaded phone call becomes more dreaded rather than less.
The other kind of reversal, for me, works, but I know it does not for everybody. Getting the news or information earlier is a cause for celebration! I like those sorts of surprises (for the positives, at least).
