Today I was destroyed by a cookie.
But first I woke up at 3pm. I felt good but was annoyed to have slept through half of basketball. I ate a quick “breakfast” and went to play some basketball. I played pretty well, but since everyone else was already warmed up, had a slow start. This caused me to be reassigned on D from the tallest player on the opposing team, who went on to get a bunch of unopposed rebounds. Won’t let that happen next time!
We won, in the end, and I went home satisfied. It was nearly 5pm so I made myself apples and nutella and went downstairs to study. Worked on RIAI. I got hungry again (naturally, having had no lunch!) and made myself two tacos. Still I had not had as much as I would have normally had for one big dinner. But due to the weird timing, I wasn’t very hungry.
Anna and Laura were baking cookies; they used some of my butter and promised me a cookie when they were done. So I went upstairs, did touch-ups on my internship applications, in top form. I went down to get my cookie. They were cooling on the sheet, but Anna wouldn’t hand me one until Laura got back downstairs from something. I thought I detected a note of annoyance in her voice but dismissed it as ridiculous and sat down with my RIAI slides.
Anna gave me my cookie, which was delicious. (It was the second cookie that got me). I ate it, and soon went back upstairs. Anna came up a bit after, and I asked (in friendly form, complimenting the last cookie) for another. But Anna was irked, and said that to ask for one’s cookie instead of patiently waiting for it was pushy. I held the conversation for a minute longer, trying to figure out if some weird cultural difference was in effect, then went back to my room, where I promptly collapsed! I went to pieces. I put on my shoes and coat and went out for a walk.
Why was I destroyed by the cookie? Maybe I was hungry and needed more food. (After the walk I made myself an omelet.) Maybe I felt lonely after seeing all my friends at home and Anna’s irkedness felt unfriendly. But I have a history of feeling betrayed by friends when they do something to me that I wouldn’t have to them. There have been moments in this crazy life of mine much like this one. Like when I sat on the library steps crying because my pal Henry Banks hadn’t responded to an email I sent (age 10 or so). When I collapsed in a heap on the newly carpeted stairs of Valencia, because my mom had sent me to get a coffee, I had biked back with it and scalded my hand, and I (stupidly) thought my pain was for nothing–Ididn’t think Mom needed the crutch of a coffee. I was in my super-disciplined, clean-the-house on a whim, go through 3 algebra lessons a day, mode and had not yet experienced the stress of adulthood.
When, I suppose now, I think of myself as a giving personality who would give time and the cookies off his back to anyone who needed them, and someone says I’m being pushy for wanting another cookie.
In all these cases, I held myself to some standard, implicitly held everyone else to the same (flawed, overwrought) standard (of responsiveness, disciplinedness, or generosity). It’s a classic case of typical mind fallacy. And it’s one of the few patterns that can really destroy me. Strangely, another one is to hold myself too firmly to one of my goofy standards, and despair as I realize it’s not actually the be-all and end-all. The second pattern I already have a name for–it’s falling for the seduction of eternalism, from David Chapman’s Meaningness. The first one I will now name–I’ll call it being a cookie monster. It’s when you think, “I am all about giving out cookies, but you won’t give me a break when I ask for just one”, and get really pissed off; except that you’re the only one who is always giving out cookies.
The very natural conclusion here is just not to be the guy who will always hand out cookies in the first place. Don’t hold yourself to the standard, then you’ll stop expecting it of others. You can’t go too far here, otherwise you become a bit of an apathist. Maybe just a roguish disinclination to hold yourself to any fixed standard will stop you from holding others to fixed standards. To a rogue, there are still standards, but they are more nebulous and time-averaged, and disappointments are gradual. I would have remembered lots of times Anna had been nice to me, and been unsurprised when, as I was cooking my omelet, Anna came over to check if I was feeling OK (she must have noticed my dismay earlier) and gave me that second cookie.
There are a couple other nuances to this story, which I can’t fit into such a neat pattern. I believe sharing should not be transactional. Anna offered to buy me more butter to replace the butter she’d used; I thought that was silly and told her so. I sincerely think butter should be repaid in cookies, and vice versa–this kind of complex reciprocation is important to friendship and bonding. Should I give this up as a value? Probably not.
The other, more important nuance is that every social interaction is fraught with noise, and that the cookie ordeal was probably just noise. Anna was feeling annoyed, for some complicated biochemical reason, before I asked her for the cookie.I came to this conclusion when I was out on my walk and got like 5 random, kind messages from a random person in Culmann that I’d just met, and was totally bewildered. That’s why this analysis focuses on my known pattern of response, not the situation itself (I know I’m not a greedy person who pisses people off by asking for too many cookies, THAT is not the problem.)
Some things about noise:
- When there is enough signal in your life, it’s easy to neglect the noise–but in a liminal passage, as I am now, noise is harder to ignore.
- Noise is hard to make sense of–partially why I was so confused when I went out to walk.
- Noise confuses optimizers. But opportunizers use noise. They are antifragile, in Taleb’s sense. If they’re given a random gift by life, they exploit it to the fullest extent possible; but in the opposite situation, they work to minimize the problem. Noise opens doors that you can sneak through and then convince the world you belong on the other side of. It causes you to learn things about yourself (case in point). It rarely closes doors you can’t reopen. Ergo, stop trying to explain noise, just become sensitive to its power.
Ok, another article I should move to my main blog! But I’ll just conclude the day.
After I got back and made myself an omelet, I watched a bit of Mad Men, wasn’t enjoying it, so I went downstairs and hung out a bit with that new resident who’d messaged me, Michéle, and Yeomin (Michéle is actually Korean so they were hanging together). I ate the tiramisu Alice had given me for agreeing to swap kitchen cleanings. I chatted with Daniel in the kitchen–good to see him, he’s got a ton of exams and is studying hard. I worked a bit on RIAI, hit a block; went back upstairs and wrote this log. I’m gonna stay up a bit more and then crash!