I’ve heard if you ask Google to google Google you’ll bring down the Internet. I don’t think it’s true. You’ll probably just get Google. Maybe if you asked, ‘What is the last decimal digit of pi?’ because pi has an infinitely long number of decimal places. It’s the sort of number that just can’t make its mind up. That’s why it’s called an irrational number. It’s like, “Oh a bit more than that, OK, now a touch less, ah but more than, yes but just a tweak less” and so on. And on. Google may, in the twink of an electrons heartbeat, deduce the first hundred, two twinks for two hundred and so on, and in fifty years it would still be churning out digits. It takes a long time to do the impossible. So why do we set our brain to solve imponderable, impossible problems. It’s fabulously capable but that’s just nasty. Yet every day we wonder, “Should I have...? Could I be…? Will it be OK when…? What will happen if…? Why do they…?”
They’re all questions that could bring down the Internet. There is no answer. Google might just manage an error message, “Can’t cope. Question impossible!” before it fizzles into digital oblivion. Unfortunately your brain won’t provide you with a simple error message, unless you count sleepless nights, headaches, hair falling out and forgetting where you are. So stop it! Stop asking your brain impossible questions; you’ll melt the poor thing. Evolution has only designed it to make sense of your senses, i.e. see lion > vacate area > move legs rapidly, that sort of thing. Simple question, der,der,der, simple answer. ‘Txich. Simple’, as the meerkat says.
So next time you find yourself asking your brain to solve an impossible question, don’t! Ask it any number of simple, tangible questions to get you closer to what you want. It’ll answer them all without breaking sweat. It really is ‘Txich, that simple.’
Try googling Csikszentmihalyi on ‘Flow.’ It won’t bring the internet down though his name does resemble decimal pi.
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