Inches

In previous entries I have mentioned sports metaphors, while acknowledging my overall lack of skill and knowledge regarding most sports.

One of my favorite sports metaphors is "a game of inches", which I am pretty sure refers to football. Basically (and this is a huge oversimplification) the entire object of football is for one team to move the ball one hundred yards, against the other team which is striving to keep them from accomplishing this. Although the football field is over one hundred yards long, sometimes the teams find themselves in a situation in which a few inches will make the difference between success and failure. Officials may stop the game to take measurements to determine which team has been successful.

I am gradually becoming more and more convinced that much of life is "a game of inches" -- that the difference between happiness and unhappiness often comes down to inches rather than miles, or seconds rather than years, or pennies rather than dollars. Depending on how you look at it, this can be an uncomfortable philosophy.

Once in high school track, I lost a two-mile footrace -- in that case, a race lasting over eleven minutes -- by a fraction of a second. For the rest of my life, I have been haunted by the idea that if I had done something slightly differently, or tried slightly harder, I could have won that race. In some ways, it would be easier to believe that my opponent was simply faster, or having a better day, and I could not possibly have won -- but that does not seem to be the case.

When we fail to achieve a goal, it is often tempting to believe that the odds were somehow stacked against us and failure was almost certain, rather than that we came ever-so-close to succeeding, especially if the lack of success involves some tiny failing on our part.

This is perhaps even more true when it involves our effect on other people, and their effect on us. In an episode of the fictional sitcom "Becker", Becker asks to borrow a number two pencil from another student shortly after beginning an important written exam. The student, distracted by the request, miss-marks most of his answer sheet, fails the exam, and, as a direct consequence, is not admitted to medical school, and follows a different career path for the rest of his life. You can argue that the student SHOULD have been more careful, or SHOULD have re-taken the exam in the future, or somehow risen above the obstacle Becker placed in his path, but the (fictional) fact remains that if Becker had NOT asked for the pencil, the student's life would have unfolded in a different direction.

The "Becker" episode is a fictional example, but illustrates something that can and does happen in real life, probably more often than we can ever know. It is not comfortable to realize that we can dramatically alter either our own lives or the lives of others by something as minor as asking to borrow a pencil, and I am sure that many people would voice strong objections to the idea. To be fair, the Becker example is somewhat negative, while a small thing might also have a positive effect.

It is tempting to give credit or blame to "luck" or "fate" in the cases of small things having large impacts. Most collisions between automobiles would not have occurred if either vehicle had been at a slightly different location or at a slightly different time or under other slightly different circumstances. The fact that they did occur was "bad luck". At the same time, many collisions between automobiles involve predictable problems and preventable risks -- a drunk or otherwise distracted driver, or perhaps someone running late and speeding because someone had asked them for a number two pencil.

Real life is complicated. In real life, everything that happens involves a web of an infinite number of factors. Sometimes we can give credit or blame to one obvious factor, such as a particular act of valor changing the course of a battle. More often, success or failure depends on a multitude of factors both large and small, and changing any one of them might change the outcome. Without a time machine, we can never be certain what effect any change would have produced (though we can have hypothetical discussions, run computer simulations, and otherwise engage in speculation).

I could give other examples of seemingly insignificant things having large effects, but, as I have stated, this is an uncomfortable idea, and will always produce a certain amount of resistance. Especially, it is uncomfortable to accept that something very small we have or have not done has had a large negative effect on ourselves or someone else. In the case of someone else, we refuse to acknowledge that their problem is our fault -- they should have been able to overcome the tiny problem we threw at them. In the case of ourselves, it seems preferable to blame outside forces, or overwhelming forces.

I realize that I am simultaneously arguing that we are reluctant to admit the large negative impact we may have on others, while arguing that many of our own problems that we blame on others are in fact due to small failings on our own part. This may seem inconsistent. Furthermore, I am largely ignoring the small things that have a large positive impact.

Truth is complicated.