Intervals...

I went to a seminar by Prof Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics on Friday. He is in fact a psychologist but since he investigates the aspects of human behaviour that relate to the fundamental assumptions underlying economic theory, his Nobel award in economics is justified.

I won’t bore you with the details of the fundamental assumptions of economics. But, in short, they are that people are rational, selfish and their tastes don’t change. In my humble opinion, rationality assumption is exaggerated. Unlike what’s implied, rationality does not require all decisions to be correct – whatever that means and whoever could achieve it?! They just need to be consistent with the conditions at the time and the desired outcomes. Rationality also does not assume uniformity: what is rational for me can easily be irrational for others. Selfishness assumption is also generally misunderstood: we are selfish and seek happiness but that does not exclude the possibility of other people’s happiness making us happy. In fact, if it did, no ‘rational’ person would ever have children!

Prof Kahneman says people’s rationality and selfishness are bounded (basically they are not always rational or selfish), they have limited self-control and they change their minds. Yeap, this is why he got the Nobel…And it’s not surprising…both economists and psychologists spend their entire careers searching for ‘proofs’ for the most obvious. But for those who try to understand human behaviour (theirs or others’), is there any other choice than exploring the obvious?

Anyway, this is not a piece about economics or my cunning plan about getting a Nobel on the easy! It’s about another obvious – what would make life better…should I ever worry myself with such a question.

Prof Kahneman said “Think of life as a succession of moments. People think of it [life] as a story, a narrative. They want it to be meaningful. They want to improve it. All our intuitions favour life satisfaction. We live in the present but we don’t get to keep the present. We keep the memories…and our memories are selective. [In our memories] routine is not important.” This is from my notes so apologies if I got anything wrong.

It was really exciting to hear him say these words because they were a confirmation of my little way of making my life better. About three years ago, I suddenly came to the realisation that I lived my life as if I was in a theatre. All my excitement was about the ‘Acts’ and all my happiness came from them. The trouble was, I also realised, Acts were rather short and infrequent and most of my time was spent in the intervals. And there was only so much chocolate ice cream one could eat!

I promised myself that I would make the intervals more interesting. That’s when I pushed myself into things that I’d shied away from before, like learning to act by going to an improvisation course; travelling to Australia after 20 years of dreaming about it; staying away from people with negative energy who were bringing me down; starting this blog, taking photographs again and so on and so forth.

As I was listening to Prof Kahneman, it became clear that this realisation I had upon waking up one workday morning had been a life-changing moment. I am going to bed now, if I am lucky there will be another revelation tomorrow morning…but more likely I’ll rush out of the house…I have a deadline tomorrow!

P.S. Dating update update – I’ve thought about this more. I have no right or need to be annoyed. Anyway, bygones... Text received from the non-date; not responded, no need. All I say is that this ‘Act’ of my life has flopped until a better leading man shows up :)