Go ahead and try it, make two sandwiches exactly the same and cut one in half to make two rectangles and the other in half to form two triangles, I promise you the triangular one will somehow taste better. The fillings don’t matter, that’s up to your choice.
This clearly isn’t true, but somehow a sandwich cut into triangles tastes better, it’s easier to eat for sure which does affect the way you perceive your eating experience. It may seem innocuous but little differences make big differences to your experience of anything. It is also visually more pleasing and it is well known that we do eat with our eyes (all our senses) and food that looks good is more enjoyable.1
I’m sure there are people who will deny the truth in this, they will state with great affirmation that rectangular is the only way, or might bring up the fact that bread isn’t uniformly square so what then? Well, they can continue being negative and pretending they are right. Eating their sad rectangular food. I never said it has to be a perfect triangle on a geometric level: Is this food isosceles? Maybe it’s an acute angle sandwich triangle?
We all make neurological connections continuously throughout every day while awake and asleep. Our brains don’t stop working till we’re dead ,and are in a constant state of action, processing whatever input we have had and whatever subconscious thoughts are happening.
Have you ever had a thought, for example you are out walking and see an ad on a bus for a cheese burger, then you think “mmm, I like burgers” then you’ll jump to the thought that you had a burger with an old friend you haven’t seen so you think “Must catch up” which then reminds you of the TV series you need to finish watching, which leads you to the idea you need to exercise more instead of watching TV… and so on. This is a perfectly natural thing, our memories and thoughts are driven by these neural connections and can easily lead from one subject to another. Often people who have Attention Disorders have the problem of leaping from thought to thought rapidly to the point they can’t concentrate.
Maybe I once had a great sandwich that happened to be triangular and forever more my mind thinks this is how sandwiches should be. Or maybe the fact (and it is a fact, a geometrical one) that triangular sandwiches are easier to eat just makes me think they are better? If you buy a pre-made sandwich from a supermarket it will most often be triangular., when eating on the go it’s easier and the shops know it looks nicer2.
Our perceptions via these connections give a bias to everything we see, read, watch and experience whether we think they do or not. Your brain does many marvellous things that you are not remotely aware of.
These personal perceptions, these viewpoints imbue meaning onto everyday objects, experiences, interactions and people. Meaning is important to us, it gives our lives something to drive us and keep us going and hopefully progressing. Without meaning we can easily feel lost or aimless and this can lead to depression or a real lack of self-care.
However, this isn’t about the real meaning we see and need in our lives, this is about whether or not we apply too much meaning to things. Of course this is hard to measure as meaning is entirely insular. What is meaningful to you is going to be different for others. You may be a member of a religion and essentially all members believe the same things but your value might be in simply believing, whereas others may find meaning in going to Church and the rituals that go along with it, or maybe the meaning is in the values of the belief system that you apply to your own life.
What is meaningful is entirely in your head, it is invented. This makes it completely individualised even if you are part of a collective with the same basic views.
Anyone who reads my writing regularly will know I am an unapologetic atheist so believing in a religious or spiritual doctrine is not at all meaningful to me. However, being an atheist doesn’t mean I don’t believe in things and don’t see meaning. I apply meaning to events and people in my life, my emotions work and react to things. Seeing an old friend for the first time in a long time is meaningful to me, my career and the work I do is meaningful to me but do I see meaning where there isn’t any?
For example, an old superstition, a black cat. I love cats and I don’t believe for a second that black cats mean anything other than “look a cute fluffy thing”. How about a ladder? I don’t walk under ladders, not because of superstition but because the likelihood of a can of paint or a tool dropping on me is increased. Horoscopes are the same, they are very good at suggesting there is meaning in planetary alignment and this will bring you love or luck or bad luck and there is no way anyone can prove that this does not mean anything, much like the existence of god. I can’t prove he doesn’t exist and nor can any prove he does.
Some of you may believe in fate, that somehow meeting a person in a cafe that led to a conversation that led to you applying for a job and getting the job that this cafe and that day have meaning beyond pure chance and a little bravery to talk to a stranger. Forever more you may think that cafe is your lucky spot but it isn’t, it was pure chance.
I put meaning into past experiences that are good or bad but I try to look at them logically rather than something metaphysical. I have music that means something to me, people, certain places where there may be no meaning to others, or a different meaning. The issue I have is putting some kid of mystical meaning into anything, claiming that meeting a person somehow meant you would succeed because you won the lottery after you met them. Or some kind of superstitious ritual where you claim your team will win the game if you do it every time. Those are rituals that only have meaning to the individual. But we all need to believe what we do to get by in life.
Our search for meaning in things often leads down the path of asking ourselves this question:
What if?
One of the great questions of human kind, what if? What if we didn’t create agriculture, or weapons? What if we never had the industrial revolution? What if someone went back in time and killed Hitler as a baby?
All completely stupid questions. What if is probably the most ridiculous question you can ask yourself or anyone else. Why is it stupid? Because there is never an answer. Unless we actually did invent time travel and tried out some of these theories we will never know the answer so why ask?
The issue with time travel (yes, I did just say that) is something brought up in science fiction many times. If we travel back in time, kill Hitler (for arguments sake) not only does that not mean WWII would not have happened, it is also likely to change our timeline in various other ways which could cause an even greater horror than the holocaust of WWII. Maybe Goebbels would have taken the lead and won the war? Assuming you can change one thing and have a definite outcome is absurd in a world where the odds of anything unexpected happening are fairly high.
We simply don’t know. Maybe there is some comfort for some people to ask what if? Maybe imagining a better outcome if only you’d turned left rather than right, chosen the tuna melt rather than the BLT, voted labour instead of conservative? You won’t know and it’s silly to even ask. You did what you did, chose what you chose, said what you said. It’s done.
It is fun to imagine alternate timelines, it is a classic sci-fi trope but the reality is a daft attempt to rationalise poor decision making in the first place. Could WWII have been averted without time travelling assassins? Probably, but someone didn’t make the right decisions at the time and we can’t blame people for that because history is littered with bad decisions. Not just history in a general sense but your personal history.
What if I never tried that first cigarette? Would I have never become a smoker or was that gonna happen at some point? What if I hadn’t chosen to leave a job or move house, or move country? My life could be completely different, but it’s not, it is what it is and regretting my choices also means regretting the good choices.
It is normal, inherent even, that we all make good and bad decisions. Not one person who has ever existed has lived a life free of mistakes and bad calls3.
You may be considering a “what if?” right now, what if I had bought stocks in Bitcoin when I had the chance? Would you be rich? What if you had and you lost all your money in the recent crash in the crypto market and now you’re worse off than ever?
What if you had said yes to the person who asked you out on a date? Would they be the one for you and you’d be happy instead of lonely? What if you said yes and they turned out to be a serial killer?
It may sound silly but these are real and possible events. The reason asking “What if” is stupid is because you don’t know that the alternative choice would have made you better off, it may have worsened your situation.
Beyond really not knowing if your alternate decision would have been any better for you, there was in fact dozens, maybe hundreds of alternate choices which all could have lead down different paths and you have very little control over any of those outcomes.
Don’t ask yourself “what if?” Ask yourself, why you chose badly, or why your problem solving skills didn’t help you out. Ask yourself not to repeat your own fuck ups. Ask yourself what you did to lead yourself to the negative outcome. It may be your fantasy alternate reality where you chose B instead of A would lead to your untimely death. You don’t fucking know either way.
Going down this path is risky for us. “What if” questions are similar to nostalgia where you are actually lingering in the past which never seems to lead to positive change. You might undergo some therapy to revisit and deal with past trauma but the aim is to leave that behind and move on as a person and what if questions aren’t about moving on, they get in the way of it.
If you want to progress as a person in any way, you need to think about present and future change, not changes and alternatives that never happened. They never will happen.
What if is a way of finding meaning in bad decisions, knowing now you made a bad call is good but it won’t change anything that has previously occurred.
What if I cut my sandwiches into rectangles, or fuck it, why not little circles? What if I never tried a triangular sandwich? Would my life be better or worse? Or would I simply not know how good this shape is for food????
None of it matters and all of it is individualised. If you really don’t agree about my assertions on the shape of food I don’t truthfully care. What matters is your own view of what is of value, what works and what doesn’t or has no value. If you have this clear you can move away from “What if” questions and make some progress.
We all easily get stuck on connections we make internally, thinking these have some real meaning in the real world but you have imparted that meaning, not your friends and neighbours and not your enemies.
I’d prefer to ask “what can be?” to look ahead and see alternate future timelines where we make better choices. And one thing you should all choose is to cut your sandwiches in the correct fashion.
1Like anyone who likes to eat out I have had my share of food that looks good but doesn’t taste good, however, it is generally a good rule of thumb that if it looks nice it usually is.
2I suspect there’s some manufacturing and storage convenience involved too.
3 I don’t have evidence for that, but the likelihood is high. Additionally, you don’t have evidence to contradict that statement. I suspect if there have been any such flawless creatures they will be as rare as Unicorns
The Everyday Behaviour Analyst 