Stars in the Dark

This is going to be a short post, after a long break. As you know, things are a bit hectic for me at the moment. However, I always find that difficult times make me reflect more deeply on the things that are going well in my life. Small blessings are magnified and it is paradoxically more easy to smile. One of my favorite professors was fond of Dr. King's quote "only in the darkness can you see the stars".

What is it that makes us this way, do you think? So able to get caught up in the minutiae of our troubles and also so capable of being our best when things are falling down around us. Is it some kind of evolutionary advantage? A regularization mechanism that keeps us stable through rough patches?

As you know, I have a pet theory that our utility functions are comprised of many small quick-moving terms (our quotidian concerns about our work, the weather, our life experiences, etc) and a few large slow moving terms (our overall level of health, the relationships we've built, etc). I suspect we tend to filter out the latter in favour of the former, and perhaps this makes sense on some level. It's easier to do local optimization on the quick moving terms. However, when something bad happens, we are forced to lift the filter, zoom out and really re-evaluate our situation, and see for the first time in perhaps a long time how many things are going right in our lives.

Do you believe in these dynamics? Do they apply only at the individual level or can the same be said of larger collections of people? Do you feel they work the same for you?

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