Silly Spillover
During a Saturday morning in the middle of the summer, my hometown was struck with a particularly severe storm that left my family and the guests we had over stuck at home for several hours.
“This sucks, my weekend is over!” one of the guests exclaimed. In case it wasn’t obvious, this guest was in their teenage phase at the time.
Of course most observers of this reaction will attest that this is an exaggeration, the weekend was far from over. And though the storm may have altered their plans, it’s a bit of a stretch to think it was ‘responsible’ for their relative unhappiness for the remainder of the weekend.
This knee-jerk reaction to have one event color in a substantial volume of future events and time is what I call “silly spillover”.
Spillover to describe the qualities of one event, notably our experience of it, leaking into or influencing our experience of other events.
Silly because it’s fundamentally irrational and needless. But, as humans we sometimes think and do silly things.
The storm is inconvenient but it didn’t need to ruin the weekend. Plans can change, we can accept them, and — surprise, surprise — we can turn things around and have a good time.
And so too is the case with many challenges in life.
Just because things don’t go according to plan doesn’t mean the situation is irreparably broken.
We are far more adaptable, resilient, and creative than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.
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About me:
I'm a second-generation Taiwanese American trying to find life’s greatest sources of meaning and make the most out of it