I went out to lunch with some coworkers recently. While we were sitting there gossiping about work, complaining about the usual politics and laughing about everything else one of my coworkers received a phone call.

It was her doctor.

She missed her appointment.

She forgot about her appointment.

Nothing bad, just a missed routine appointment.

It ruined her day.

That got me thinking. How could the fact that you didn’t remember your doctor appointment ruin your entire day? Does the fact that you missed the appointment signify a big change you need to deal with? No. It just means you need to reschedule. I think what it really does is it brings crashing down any illusion of control and order that she had over her life. Up until that moment her day was structured. It was following her predefined path. It was moving towards an predictable outcome which she had planned. One little phone call brought the entire illusion crashing down. Not only that but it demonstrated to all those around her that she wasn’t in control. We didn’t actually care. Any loss of prestige was just as imagined as the control she had in the first place.

I think we as humans do that too often. We build up this false belief that we have a degree of control over our environment that just doesn’t exist. Why do we do this to ourselves? Are certain personality types more prone to this type of behavior? Is it a compensation mechanism?