Day 345: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

A little while back, a friend introduced me to his co-worker over email, asking if I’d be open to including him in the Browserflow private beta. I said sure, and the co-worker and I set up a time for us to do the onboarding.

He never showed up.

I was quite annoyed when it happened because I had rearranged my schedule that day around the onboarding session. I was also feeling tired but had forgone a nap because I didn’t want to sleep through the call. So when he didn’t show up, I felt super crabby (thanks, sleep deprivation) and thought, bro are you for real right now.

But, of course, these things happen. I’ve accidentally missed calls before for some reason or another, and I’ve felt terrible each time. So when he sent an email apologizing and asked if we could reschedule, I said sure and we set up another time.

That was today, and when the time came, I hopped on Zoom, and… he didn’t show up again.

I don’t get angry very often, but this ticked me off. I live on a maker’s schedule, meaning that I intentionally schedule as few things as possible so that I can completely immerse myself in whatever I’m doing. So whenever I do schedule an event, it ends up creating cognitive overhead where I have to remind myself of the event and check the time throughout the day so that I don’t miss it. For makers, the cost of a meeting is not just the time for the meeting, but the hours leading up to it where some mental energy is spent simply preparing for the meeting.

When he didn’t respond to my message and enough time passed where I realized that he was going to be a no-show again, the thought that arose was, are you freaking serious? This time, it felt harder to be empathetic. When I’ve missed calls, I’ve always been paranoid about making it in time for the rescheduled event because I didn’t want to leave the other person waiting a second time. Flaking on someone once? Not great, but understandable. But twice in a row? Unfathomable. Being on the receiving end, I felt extremely disrespected.

The story could’ve ended here, with me being pissed off and writing this guy off. Maybe I’d even send him an angry email. But in the same way that studying philosophy made it impossible for me to ever close my eyes and continue eating meat, all those hours meditating and examining my mind wouldn’t let things end here. The awareness that noticed the anger also noticed the story behind it.

Meditation teachers often talk about not believing the thoughts in your head, and what they’re pointing to is recognizing thoughts as mere thoughts. They’re whispers that show up from nowhere and disappear into the same void. These thoughts sometimes tell seductive stories that we believe without recognizing them as just stories.

In this case, the story here was that the person I was supposed to meet with was being disrespectful of my time and therefore deserved to be the recipient of my anger. But was this really true?

Maybe there was an emergency. Perhaps he had to stay up really late to take care of a family member and slept through the meeting. Or he’s struggling with physical or mental health issues and just couldn’t muster up the energy to make the call. After all, what do I know about his situation? When I think about these possibilities, the anger gives way to compassionate concern and hoping that everything’s okay for him.

But what if there were no special circumstances? What if he simply forgot about the meeting? We can even try assuming the worst and consider a reality in which he was intentionally trying to be hurtful. That is, what if he hadn’t forgotten about the meeting and deliberately decided to not show up simply to waste my time? Then does it make sense to be angry at him?

The answer is still no. This might be puzzling — if he was intentionally being a dick, why wouldn’t it make sense to hold him responsible and be angry at him? To answer that, let’s look at another situation: If you accidentally brushed against some poison oak that gave you a rash, would it make sense to be angry at the plant?

Of course not. How can you be mad at a plant? It has no agency. What could poison oak do other than be poison oak? It’s not out to get you — it’s just doing it’s thing. It just is.

Are humans any different? Even though it feels like we possess agency, upon closer examination, free will simply doesn’t hold up. I’m not going to get super deeply into it here, but at this point, it’s evident to me that we don’t have free will in the way that most people think we do. When I get into discussions about it, people often wonder why this matters at all — isn’t it just some abstract philosophical argument? But dropping the assumption of free will actually has significant implications for how you view yourself, others, and the world.

In the case of this guy not showing up for our call, it makes just as much sense to be angry at him as it would to be angry at a plant. He couldn’t have done anything differently. The conditions at the moment of our call — his genes, his upbringing, his mental state, his personality, his environment, etc. — all led up to him not showing up. And none of those factors were within his control. Even if he was being malicious and intentionally trying to hurt me, that inclination and the resulting actions would also be outside of his control. He’s just an expression of all the conditions coming together in that moment. It simply is what it is.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to set up another call with him. Even if it doesn’t make sense to be angry at poison oak, it’d be foolish not to avoid it because it’s going to lead to unpleasant results. In the same way, it’s clear that his approach to meetings is incompatible with the way I’d like to spend my time, so unless there’s reason to believe things would be different, I’m not planning on trying to set up another session with him. The difference that seeing stories as stories makes is that this decision is based off of simply recognizing causes and effects rather than a spiteful action made out of anger.

We’re story-telling creatures, so it’s understandable that we constantly construct stories about the world around us. The beauty of meditation is that it helps you see things as they are — thoughts are thoughts and stories are stories. And with that clarity, it becomes much easier to drop the delusions that cloud our judgment and generate unnecessary suffering.