smooth seas do not make skillful sailors

We are extraordinary beings.  Not only do we have the capacity to think, perceive, imagine, and plan, but we can also travel through time.  And even more amazingly, we are incredibly resilient and adaptive.

Of course, it doesn’t always feel like that.  Planning and adaptation do not always co-exist peacefully.  We are designed not only to imagine the worst of all possible worst-case scenarios, but to imagine it in the most exquisitely painful detail.  And to add insult, despite our careful imaginings, we still fail to account for all the possible possibilities that we can encounter, thereby making those worst cases seem extra harsh.

But there is a reason for this.

Or rather, two.  The first is biological - worst case scenario planning allows us to build our physical resiliency and it arms us in the face of adversity.  Evolution equipped us with this coping mechanism to enable us to survive in harsh environments.  Your body does this without your thinking about it - fight and flight, starvation mode, pre-hypothermia, fever.  All of these are mechanisms developed by a system that has anticipated the worst-case scenario.

The second is psychological.   Emotional resiliency is just as important as physical.  Being able to understand and plan for bad situations allows us to create back-ups to the back-up plan.  It also steels our emotions and thoughts in preparation for the coming blow, so that you won’t be caught unawares, and can adjust to the situation more quickly.

In most cases, you come out on top.

Our ability to imagine the worst-case scenario has a secondary benefit.  In the moment, your experience is never as bad as you anticipated.  Why?  Because you anticipated it.  In a sense, you experienced it before it happened, and what’s left is to adapt and react.  And of course, your brain is tricking you. But it’s for your own good.

Life goes on.

We imagine never seeing a way out of this, never surviving this, never moving on.  But we’re wrong, because we hyper-focus on that one instance in our anticipation and forget that, even in that future moment when all hell breaks loose, life still keeps happening. You get fired.  And in that same day, you enjoy a delicious lunch, you share a laugh with your spouse, your dog does something cute, you discover how supportive your friends really are.  And when you look back at the moment, you realize it wasn’t really as bad as you thought it would be.  You also, hopefully, realize there are lessons to learn from that experience, and you are stronger for it.