Don’t Sell Your Boat, Mister by “Saving Sailing” author Nicholas Hayes
##We think we’re too busy to go to Paris or India, or for that matter, to go sailing one night a week... Are we? Photo by Dan Phelps
This popped into my email inbox a few days ago:
“The desire is there, but no time to get out on the water so... Laser boat for sale. Very good condition.” What occupiers of time would have such pull as to overrule desire? Desire is, after all, a bold, aspirational word. Its use suggests that the seller would be much happier sailing than not and deeply regrets this unfortunate position. Needing to know more, I stalked the guy on Facebook and LinkedIn. I’ve seen him around. Seems nice. Forties, maybe. Fit. Doesn’t hang with kids, so I don’t suspect he has any. Not sure about a partner. Works in IT for a big firm. I can only guess that the pressures at his job are large but that he makes a nice living and figures sailing can wait. If you’re like me, you’re probably sick and tired of all the “live in the moment” memes posted on Facebook (of all the places to preach about gumption). And Carpe Diem is so ‘80s. The present is fine. What about the future? I’ve been looking to 40 June 2014 SpinSheet
experts to learn why we make the choices we do at the moment we make them. For example, why answer the boss’s call on a Tuesday evening instead of launching your Laser and sailing with friends? Or why get rid of the Laser in the first place, if sailing it is something you “desire”? Daniel Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard and author of the 2007 book “Stumbling on Happiness” has done the research and concludes: 1.) We tend to imagine an idealized future in the same way that we impose biases on our memories and recall things as better or worse than they actually were (this explains both nostalgia or regret and undue optimism or pessimism). 2.) Since we imagine the future inaccurately, we base our present happiness, or lack thereof, on what we feel and see now. This explains why GM owners will say that spinsheet.com