This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
Tragedy hurts twice
A friend of mine recently found out that the engine in his family’s RV is shot after gasoline somehow ended up in the diesel tank. How did it happen?
They have no idea.
Their best guess is, unlikely as it sounds, that one of the gas stations they stopped at during a long trip misrouted one of the pumps. They’re in the process of trying to find out if there have been a lot of other reports anywhere along the route they took, in which case a lawsuit could be on the table. Confidence in this is not strong.
As you can imagine, this came as a very large and very unpleasant surprise. My friends’ family is what you might consider middle middle class. The RV was one of their major assets. The cost for replacing the engine is around twenty thousand dollars.
Technically, they can afford it, but only if they forgo some relatively urgent repairs on the fixer-upper home they’ve been fixer-uppering for the past couple of years.
So, they are faced with two equally unpalatable options:
Try to sell the RV for whatever they can, with its busted engine
Replace the engine, then try to sell it to recoup the cost
As of now, they haven’t made a decision. Possibly they’re hoping they might discover some third, less terrible option. But I think the bigger reason is that, once they make a decision, they’ll have to just live with it.
My friend’s RV problem has got me thinking about how this kind of gut punch event causes pain in two parts.
Part one is the pain of indecision. We put off making the decision because making a decision finalizes the bad thing we wish hadn’t happened. It’s saying, “Yep, this thing happened, and these are the immutable consequences.” We have to relinquish the unconscious hope that somehow some miracle will make it all better.
Meanwhile, the indecision itself is torture. It sends us into endless loops of unresolvable hypotheticals. Like a computer succumbing to bugged software, our processing power gets totally eaten up by these endless loops, and we freeze.
Spend enough time drinking Part One Pain, and the consequences can be utterly ruinous.
How to move on? Make the decision. Tear off the bandaid. No, there are no good options, but you still have to pick one of them.
Only then can you graduate to Part Two, which is grief. Grief that the thing happened. Grief at the inevitable consequences of the decision you had to make. Grief at the loss you are suffering.
The pain of grief is bad, but it can be processed. It can be metabolized. You can get over it.
But you can’t get over the pain of indecision. It can’t be processed or metabolized. It’s like a black hole -- the more energy you spend on not deciding, the more overwhelming and terrible it feels.
So, the next time something crappy smacks your life in the face, remember that you’re going to have to deal with that pain in two parts. Then, quick as you can, get to part two, so that, quick as you can, you can get over it, and move on with your life.
Click at least one of these or else…
…ten thousand people will simultaneously get a case of the hiccups that lasts nine years. What are you a monster?
Pain in two parts