I scare my youngest son with my driving. He's a nervous type, so I'm not sure I'm fully to blame. But it seems we Campbells enjoy a healthy tradition of vehicular anxiety. When my dad and I used to drive through traffic going into the city, it sometimes got a little sketchy. But I didn't want to make him aware of my fear, so I devised a strategy: close my eyes. Despite being young, I understood my eyes were to blame for my fear and if I was in the same seat going the same speed with no cars around us, I would feel fine. So that's where I went. I closed my eyes and visualized an empty highway. I let myself believe there were no cars nearby and turned the bumps in the road into my personal massage chair. And this worked. But not without its tradeoffs.
"Open your eyes!", she shouted. My best friend's mom was incredulous. She must have peeked over at me as we came around the final corner. She couldn't understand why I would ride the steepest, fastest roller coaster in the world and spend the entire time with my eyes closed pretending to be somewhere else. Why did I even get on? I suppose I just wanted to say I was brave enough to ride the Steel Phantom. But if I gamed my brain into avoiding any feeling of fear, was I brave? Bravery only counts if I'm facing down something despite my fear. But this feels like cheating.
Don't get me wrong, burying my head in the sand has its utility, but the mentality behind it matters. Using it as a means to avoid heightened panic is worth doing, but using it as a crutch to avoid experiencing life is where things get dicey. If it becomes a habit, the act of avoiding problems spills into things like personal responsibility, where acute attention is mandatory. Eventually, I'll happy-place myself into complete and utter unreliability. Regaining the trust and faith of others after earning that label is tough sledding.
What's worse, I get so skilled at meditating my worries away, even small tasks are more easily avoided, leading to supercharged procrastination. And if a phone call is involved, forget it. What am I, a switchboard operator? Last year we got a bill in the mail from the city saying we were getting charged $813 for sewer service that we don't use. We have an older house that still uses a septic system, but most of our neighbors are tied into the city sewer. It's a simple mistake but I had to call to get it resolved. I waited months to make the 7-minute phone call to get my $813 back. 7 minutes. That's $6,968.57 an hour. That's $14,494,625.60 a year. Sadly, that means I'd have to make 17,829 phone calls and this analogy has officially petered out.
The point is, it took nearly zero effort to tackle that task and yet I waited months because I didn't "feel like" facing it head-on. This brand of irrational avoidance is highly personal, however, as my wife or daughter would already be on the phone with the city before shutting the mailbox. But what about me? How do people like me get over the tendency to ostrich ourselves in these circumstances? In my case, I double down. I bury my head about burying my head, so instead of ignoring the task, I ignore the trepidation about completing the task and pick up the damn phone to call the city. It doesn't always work, but more often than not, I hack myself into skipping over the putting-it-off part, and before I realize what happened, "it" is already done. And I've done the research - the feeling I get from a checked box is so much more satisfying than that of a box deferred to next week.
Oh, and if you close your eyes on rollercoasters like I used to, here's a tip and again, I've done the research: instead of closing your eyes and feeling nothing, scream bloody murder during the drops. It converts your fear into unbridled joy. You're welcome.
Or…