What Would You Change if Confronted With Injury

Today I want to talk about why sometimes it is good to be forced to do something we know we should do but, without being forced, we don’t do it.

So, I gave a talk in an organization. We covered lots of topics and among them, we talked about romantic life. Not my area of expertise but clearly it has important relevance to social science. Toward the end there was a very nice woman who described very openly and caringly and with concern, that she had been with her husband for a very long time and they were diverging for a very long time. He had his career, she had her career, they met to do all kinds of chores but they’re very divergent. She said that it’s very clear that she needed to make some real adjustments. It’s possible that he would make some adjustment, but she needed to make some real adjustments—giving up things in her career, timing, and so on to make it work. She asked me why she couldn’t make those changes. She was on this path, she knw what she was supposed to do to reunite with her husband or at least noticed some of the things that she should do for them to get back on the same path but said she can’t do it.

I told her to imagine her husband had an accident—I’m not wishing an accident on anybody—but imagine he had an accident and suddenly needed more of her time and attention. Would she find the time? Would she be able to adjust things in her life to help him. Even if it was a long-term injury, not just something for a week. She answered yes. And I asked if she would go ahead, and do it? Not whether she could, but would she actually do it? She said that she loved him very much and would make all the changes. I asked, why not do it now? (By the way, this applies for all genders and all roles.) But I said, if you recognize the need, and recognize that if it was a sharp need created by injury, you would be there, why not when it’s not a sharp need? When it’s just something that happened slowly over a long time. She said she didn’t know exactly. That the two things felt very different to her. An injury feels like the commitment is easy to come up with—it’s urgent, it’s important, it’s now, it can’t be delayed by another day. She said on the slow divergence, there’s no forcing function. She didn’t use those terms, but basically there was no forcing function for her.

More generally, I think it raises the point of what is easy for us to do on our own. And how easy it is for us to delay things that we know are good, but we’re still tempted to delay. The things that we think we will do another time and the benefit of forcing functions. I’m hoping nothing bad will happen to your loved one but think about this as a thought exercise: If you’re not finding the time for something, how would you behave differently if there was an injury involved? Can you turn around and clear some time?

That’s the thought exercise for today.