Circling the question

We have probably all experienced it at one time or another, but it is best known in the case of women: when they get pregnant they start to see other pregnant women or newborn babies everywhere, not only in the baby shop (that they did not use to visit that much) but also in their favorite cafés, at the grocer's, in the shopping wall, even at the football stadium. This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and it occurs through the combination of two psychological processes: the selective attention means that they are hyper-focused on baby-related matters; the confirmation bias applies every single observation to reinforce the belief that pregnant women are everywhere.

However this effect is not limited to pregnancy. The day you buy a new car, or a new pair of boots, a flashy handbag or even a smartwatch you will suddenly start to see so many people that have exactly the same make that you bought. This happens even if you have just been looking at the different models, you will suddenly start to see them all over the place, mainly because you have just trained yourself to identity them. The fury part is that, even it many of these items are subject to fashion (i.e. they were not as common one or ten years ago) your awareness about them changes literally overnight, so the effect cannot be attributed to a difference in popularity.

Photo: Mark Hillary

Remarkably, this biased perception goes well beyond material objects and applies equally to customs and even ideas and beliefs. It is not at all uncommon to retain an idea from a book you are reading, something that resonates particularly with your point of view and just a couple of weeks later hearing exactly the same concept in a movie. This coincidence would be very easy to understand it it were about a very actual matter (politics, economy, religion) but it happens even in more philosophical and abstract matters, because that kind of deep-cutting questions never find a satisfactory answer and we have been working at it for decades or even centuries.

In my case, the question that has been plaguing me for a couple of months now is the competition between opportunities and time, because life can be like a chocolate bar: when you are young, you break away the first strip (yes, I am quite orderly when eating chocolate, at the edge of OCD) and you notice that the remainder of the bar is still pretty much the same, so you quietly start to nibble away until the first strip is gone; the second strip follows a similar pattern, but by the time you start with the third you realize that the bar is just not the same, you still have plenty left but it is certainly not a whole bar anymore, and the impression only goes worse from there.

A popular trope these days states that every day is full of new opportunities, which would in principle lead us to believe (contrary to the original intent) that we are never going to run out of them. Besides, every opportunity that you decide to take comes with a cost, known literally as "opportunity cost", because when you are busy working towards a goal you cannot devote those same time and resources to the attainment of other goals. And the cost becomes huge if, on top of the missed opportunities, you do not manage to complete the task you undertook.

The combination of the seeming abundance of opportunities and the potential for irreversible losses in case of a defeat lead many people to an existential paralysis, where they accurately see some promising options but fail to even attempt them for fear that they would be squandering something even better. Another frequent excuse is not being sure of how good the outcomes of a big effort are going to be, so instead of being disappointed many of us decide to save the strength and the heartbreak and wait for the a better occasion even if it takes a while to happen.

The problem arises when the opportunity involves two people with different hopes and availability, because the chances diminish very fast. The first real contact with this question was almost six years back in this article by American illustrator Tim Urban on his website Wait But Why. Living far from my parents (and they being divorced, which even halves the potential time together) the post resonated with me, but back then I had just turned 40 and had other worries in my head. But in recent times the question has seem to become ever present. Among other things, it is mentioned in the series finale of The Affair, which I have been watching very slowly for years until last weekend.

In the last episode of the saga, Noah, the main character and the protagonist of the indiscretion in the title, tells here daughter that people are not going to be there for her for ever and that there are only so many opportunities that you can squander before it gets to really hurt you. In yet another recent episode (it could be from the same series, but I do not remember exactly), one of the characters argues that people are not like buses, that you can just seat at the stop and wait for the next one to come around if you happen to miss the previous one.

All this has also come at a time when (or perhaps precisely because) I have become painfully aware of the fact that my parents are getting on in years, that my children are growing up with only limited contact with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and that there might be other ways of life that allow me to stay closer to my family and see them more often. Unfortunately, moving is far from free of cost: not only the pure moving expenses but also the potential development losses in my career and the change in living conditions which would be, in many aspects, for the worse even if the family life would certainly improve.

One way or another, it is clear that the question still holds and that an answer is not in sight in the short term. In all likelihood we will not have a chance to move away before the kids take off for college, but that will not happen before four years. Until then, the only alternative is to keep circling the question in case an innovative answer pop out of thin air. Suggestions and comments are, as usual welcome. And while I keep scratching my head I will try to enjoy life to the best of the possibilities that the pandemic can offer. Have a nice weekend.