Reflections on Self-Defeating Behaviours

There's an image that has been resurfacing into my mind's eye lately. A person sitting on a tree branch, diligently sawing away at the very branch supporting them until they get closer to their inevitable fall.

Sometimes when I sit outside at night under the full moon, I remotely feel like that person, especially with regards to examining my choices.

The Art Of Self-Sabotage

Last month, I did manage to established a consistent morning routine.

Meditate, write a first draft post, breakfast and then begin the day's work. This takes roughly three hours every morning. Two weeks in, I was ahead of schedule on my deadline.

But when life eventually starts testing your resolve, you'd better prepare for the inevitable slips that follow.

It only took a few late nights scrolling through social media content on ancient history for my seemingly carefully cultivated morning routine to crumble into nothing but a distant memory.

I knew exactly what I was doing as I pressed "next page" repeatedly, yet I continued anyway, almost compelled by some perverse desire to undo my own progress.

In hindsight, it's clear that even subjectively valuable information found on social media can be prone to algorithmic influences.

In a way, there's almost a comfort in failure, in the sense that it requires no responsibility to maintain what we've built.

Image Source

Today's Pleasure, Tomorrow's Pain

"Future me" is someone I perceive like a stranger, as in how my present actions will create the circumstances in which he'll have to navigate and solve problems I'm creating now.

The noticeable gap between action and consequence creates this sort of temporary delusion that somehow the branch won't break, or that I'll figure out how to fly before hitting the ground.

Interestingly, I convince myself that future me will be more disciplined, more capable, somehow better equipped to handle the accumulated weight of my current choices.

Of course, this is just a convenient fiction to keep sawing and still ignore the creaking sounds beneath me.

Surprise surprise, and when the branch finally breaks, we're genuinely shocked on how did this happen, as though we hadn't been the ones wielding the saw all along.

Strange Comfort Of Cognitive Dissonance

You know, humans are puzzling creatures, simultaneously knowing what we're doing and continue doing it anyway.

I can understand perfectly the importance of saving for retirement while still subscribing to yet another service I don't need.

This cognitive dissonance—holding contradictory beliefs and actions in mind simultaneously—should be uncomfortable. And at some level, it is.

But there's also a strange comfort in it, a way of living in two worlds at once, the world where we know better, and the world where we do what we want anyway.

Sometimes, when I step back and observe my own behavior with a sort of detached view.

It seems a bit destructive, not unlike watching a character in a farce who keeps making the same mistake over and over, expecting different results.

I can also almost appreciate the absurdity of the human condition.

Creatures who can understand cause and effect perfectly well yet act against our own interests with remarkable consistency.

No wonder we find ourselves repeating the same patterns which by extension makes history repeat itself despite our best intentions.

Wouldn't it have been easier all along, to just put down the saw, climb down from the branch, and plant my feet on solid ground instead and gaze at the beaming full moon?


Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.