Emotional bias

In today’s writing, I will start with a little story. Around a month ago, I bought a fish tank and a little goldfish for my daughter’s second birthday. I am taking care of the fish, and I am responsible for its survival by changing the water, setting up the filters, feeding, and performing other necessary tasks. Initially, I viewed it as a chore, and I was even disappointed to learn how long fish can live—the weeks passed by. I was getting more and more used to this responsibility, and I enjoyed the results of my work. Suddenly, a few days ago, the fish started to behave weirdly. It floated a bit, looked a bit weak. We worried about it, but I thought it was just a fish. If something happens, we can either replace it to spare my daughter’s feelings about losing her friend or explain that the fish went on holiday, and we’ll abandon the idea of a fish tank. No hard feelings until one night I woke up and I saw the fish floating on the surface… I was sure it was dead, so I prepared to flush it before my daughter woke up. Fortunately, before I caught the fish, it moved a bit, so I saw it was still alive. I thought I would wait till morning and decide what to do. From this moment, I started caring about the fish. I was looking up what could go wrong, what I could have missed, and how I could fix it. I discovered that, despite the pandemic, the pet shop that sold me the fish opens at 9 am, allowing me to go there and test the water. Last night, I had a dream about the fish tank. I woke up several times to check if the fish was still alive. It suddenly became vital to me to keep it alive. Consciously, I explained to myself that it was just a fish, so I should go to sleep and try to help it if possible. If it were too much effort, I should replace it. At the same time, my subconscious, emotional self was pushing toward helping the fish no matter what it takes. I woke up in the morning, went for a surf, and as soon as the pet shop opened, I went there to check the water and ask for advice. It turned out that the issue was most likely a lack of oxygen, so I bought something to increase the level of this gas in the water and applied it to the fish tank. My, or rather our goldfish, feels better now, so it was most likely that. Uff… I saved the fish, looks like the end of the story.

After all that, I started thinking about why I suddenly cared so much about the fish. I paid an extra $ 60 without even thinking, went to the pet shop first thing in the morning to save its life, and most importantly, I had a disturbing dream about leaking fishtanks and dead fish during the night. Based on my thinking process, I believe I care about it because I fear failure. I invested considerable time and effort into the concept of the fish, taking its life very personally. I coupled its well-being with my success. If the fish dies, I would take it as a failure. I can’t even take care of a fish. Nobody should give me any serious responsibility. I must have misunderstood or not read something correctly, so the fish is dying. Those types of thoughts hidden behind the compassion for the fish dominated my thought process, and I couldn’t get out of this spiral. It is fascinating how emotional investment can make us care about things that, in theory, we should take lightly. I started realising how silly it was, and it wasn’t until I talked to my dad that it hit me in the face. I was telling the sick fish story to my dad, explaining how weirdly I started to worry about the small animal while my dad was at work at the hospice… He is surrounded by dying people that nobody can help and who are just trying to spend their last days with maximum dignity. I recently came across a book that was essentially an interview with a priest who founded the hospice himself. I thought about Stoics’ “memento mori” and that death is a natural part of life, and I realised how silly my thoughts were even more. In the book that I mentioned, Jan Kaczkowski pointed out that people working with dying patients often take their survival personally, and it is dangerous for both sides. I don’t want to draw a direct comparison to my sick fish, but my thought process was very similar. I think at the end of the day, I didn’t think about the fish itself but about my failure.

Raising the level of abstraction, I firmly believe that our emotional entanglement often makes problems much more challenging to resolve. Frequently, it is better not to take things personally. At the end of the day, if a project fails, it is the project itself that suffers the most. You can move on and should, taking responsibility for your actions and critically thinking about the situation itself, not just its impact on your feelings.