It’s not a real thing, it’s your response to anxiety

My friend recently bought a new couch.

He seemed disproportionately excited about the purchase, so I asked him why this particular piece of furniture was such a big deal to him.

You don’t understand, it took me five years to find this couch.

Huh. Five years. Now that seems like an excessive amount of time for a single item.

But according to him, there was a highly specific consideration set, which narrowed his options significantly.

First, the couch had to be seven feet wide, so his tall frame had ample room to lay flat. Second, the couch had to be made with organic nontoxic materials, so the off gassing didn’t give him headaches. Third, the couch had to fall within his low price range, so the purchase didn’t set him back too much. Fourth, the couch had to fit into the bed of his brother’s truck so he could go pick it up himself and avoid paying the eighty delivery charge.

This list went on and on. He regaled me with neurotic tales from five years of obsessing over this project, from calling stores to reading customer reviews to sampling swatches, all for one damn purchase. The whole interaction made me feel anxious.

Because the only thought running through my head was, wow, my friend must be in pain.

Spending five years trying to find the perfect couch, that isn’t him being an informed, savvy consumer, this a compulsive pursuit of a distraction to soothe himself. This is a constant obsession in the service of paranoia. His unhealthy mix of procrastination and perfection and indecisiveness, that wasn’t the problem, this was the symptom.

Hope he’s doing okay in there.

Ever found yourself trapped in the briars of obsession like this? You rarely realize it when you’re in the thick of it, but sometimes you look back and wonder, what the hell was I thinking?

Grayling writes about this in his inspiring book of humanist meditations. He says that all instruments of excess are distractions. The most they teach us is the value of their absence. People aspire to possess things of value, and yearn for superlatives in experience, and enough intoxicant gives the illusion of both. But illusions carry one in a direction exactly opposite to the desires reality.

Sounds like my twenties during the height of my workaholism. Every day my mind was whirring and unproductively obsessing about the equivalent to finding the perfect couch. The question that would have been helpful for me to ask myself was:

Is this a real thing, or just my response to anxiety?

Because most of the time, it’s the latter. We’re soothing our pain.

If this project or endeavor we’re obsessing over is making us grow more agitated, manic and upset, then it’s time to divest meaning and find a healthier, more productive use of our time.

Is this a real thing, or just my response to anxiety?