The Greater the Investment...

Have you ever noticed that the more invested in something you become, the more likely you are to continue to invest in something that is heading south?

I was thinking about that today.

I was thinking about how I stayed in a bad relationship a lot longer than I should have because I thought I was "getting close." I had also thought about all that I had invested already. It seemed to make more sense to me to stay in it that to back out and go somewhere else.

I played a game once that in order to continue to play you had to pay. I wasn't going to do it. But then it seemed like I was pretty close, so I paid. But I didn't make it. But I had already paid once. So I paid again. But I still didn't make it. So I paid again. I had to be closer. I was close the first time.

I don't remember if I paid til I won, or if I stopped. But the more I invested, the more I felt I had to invest in order to get out of it what I intended to get out of it. I  bet that is a reason why games like Sugar Crush Saga are so seemingly successful. If they play off of that piece of how we operate as human beings.

I have never been a gambler, but it seems to me that gamblers are at the effect of this effect - some more than others.

In thinking about this, I found myself really curious about something. A few somethings, actually.

Why do we think that keeping going will give us a positive outcome?

How can we be so sure that what we think we know is better than what we think we don't know?

How do we know that if we just took a couple of steps in another direction - abandoning where we are - in a sense "giving up" - that we wouldn't find an easier solution or a better option?

We have come to believe that giving up is a bad thing. There are tales of those who gave up just as they were about to find diamonds (I wish I could remember the story, and whether or not it is "true," but it doesn't really matter - the over all effect on someone is most likely the same) and how much they missed out because they-just-didn't-go-one-step-farther.

It occurs to me that when we are at the effect of something, we really don't have the control we think we do. Consciously we would never want to admit it, so we will defend our actions logically. After all, who is going to quibble with logic, right?

Well...funny thing is, many people do - especially when it is someone else's logic, and not their own. Many people could look at my situation much more objectively than I ever could.  And they could see how it wasn't working, and probably never would. And they could tell that staying in wasn't going to help, but was only going to dig me deeper. But for me - I was that much closer to what I wanted (I just had to be)

It might be easy to kick myself for choices I have made, especially in that regard. But I promised myself when I went into it that no matter what happened, I was going to be without regret. I had to know and I knew if I didn't do it, I would always wonder "what if?" and I preferred to know rather than live with the what if.

I could have also done things differently. I could have seen the signs for what they were and I could have taken a different route. It never occurred to me that there was another What if? It never occurred to me that there could have been a whole different life ahead of me if I had taken that path. But the thought of losing the person that I had come to think of as so special is what drew me to the direction I wound up taking. I knew what I would be losing if I chose to move away from him, but I really didn't know what I was losing by going toward him.

Hearts Beat by Cedonaah

I went with the seeming certainties, and I went with a choice that seemed to minimize my losses.

Was it the path I was meant to go on? Some would say yes, because it is the one I chose. The fact is I learned a lot from that experience. I think I learned enough that I would consider there to be many lessons learned, enough that they will never be repeated.

At the same time, I learned things that gave me perspective that I could never have had without having been there myself. I used to judge some people in my life for their choices. It made no sense to me what they did. It would make more sense if they...

It is so much easier to talk about how you would walk in someone else's shoes than to actually walk in someone else's shoes. And the fact is that someone else's shoes won't always fit us, either so we have no idea what it really is like, because we couldn't fit into them. We also have different things we enjoy and like, so we may not even like them. Since we don't like the style, we never even would want to even try them on. We have a discomfort about something that keeps us away from them. But for someone else, it is a different story. For someone else it fits perfectly.

The shoe metaphor is a rich one. There are so many different angles that could be taken. The fact remains that for as much as we may be alike, we are all very different. Who we are is a conglomeration of things that is unique. No two people will ever experience life exactly the same way. There are times people will view something and one will come away wounded while another will come away enriched.

There was something I had read about two sisters whose father I think was an alcoholic and beat them. One became successful and had a mostly positive outcome and the other was the opposite. When asked why they were the way they were, they both said something to the effect of "Well look at how my father was. It was the only way I could be."

So once again, I started out one way, and diverged onto a different path. That seems to happen with me a lot. I would say it is mostly a good thing. It just seemed natural to go from where I was to where I got to. It took no effort at all.

Maybe that is the way life is meant to be. Maybe we are not meant to force ourselves onto other paths and roads and to put ourselves in neat little boxes. If we were meant to do that, wouldn't it seem to be easier to do? It's funny, though, because when it comes to other people it can be all too easy to do.

How much of our life do we live living up to what others think we should do and how we should be? How much of our life do we live going along with the unconscious streams that carry us along? How much are we driven by our desires? How much are we driven by the lessons we might need to learn?

How much of our life do we truly live?

And what if truly living was all of the things I mentioned above?

Hmm.