Are you scattered? Some people, for example, try to turn on the TV with their car key and use a credit card on the subway. Or put the sugar bowl in the fridge and the butter in the microwave. Or they want to call their mother, but call the boss. And so on. I call it "the Pierre Richard syndrome" after an actor who often played absent-minded people. Distraction is an endless source funny stories, Certainly. For example, I once mixed up the dates, arrived at the airport a month earlier and was very upset that there was no my flight. On the other hand, absent-mindedness can be dangerous, including for life - it's good that I mixed up the dates, not being an air traffic controller. What mental processes are behind absent-mindedness?
Distraction can be interpreted in different ways. Freud's approach is best known. He saw in the errors absent-mindedness secret signs, with the help of which the drives and conflicts repressed into the unconscious make themselves felt in consciousness. This is certainly an interesting approach. But there is also a cognitive approach to distraction. Within the framework of this approach, it is not excluded that some errors may indicate something about deep personal conflicts. But most distraction errors are still explained more operationally - as the consequences of failures in cognitive processes.
Research by psychologist James Reason, one of the world's leading experts on absent-mindedness, has shown that people most often make mistakes when they perform habitual actions under familiar conditions. Rizon calls absent-mindedness errors situations when the planned sequence of actions does not achieve the goal - somewhere there is a failure. There is always a possibility of such a failure, because something can always interfere with automated algorithms - some parallel processes, intentions, unforeseen events. In mental processes, as in physical ones, there is also interference.
As a rule, the brain perceives habitual actions as a routine, and allocates a small amount of attention to them. Maximum attention is given new activity or something subjectively very important. Of course, people in especially responsible professions are trained to voluntarily control their attention and hold it even while performing their usual professional activities. But, attention cannot be completely arbitrary - it combines activity and reactivity. Activity is conscious control, and reactivity is when something unplanned arises and distracts attention. Our intentions and unforeseen circumstances pull our attention like a blanket over each one. And attention span is limited.
Moreover, attention can be mobile and fixed - switch quickly or slowly. When attention switches too quickly, it seems to bounce like a ping-pong ball. And a lot of things can distract us, it can be difficult to concentrate. And if it is too fixed on something, then it gets stuck on one object, and we stick, we miss a lot. In principle, in a dashing minute, both can be dangerous. But, if you strengthen the arbitrariness, then you can concentrate by an effort of will, or, on the contrary, be distracted from freezing. The main thing is to get involved.
Cognitive psychologists distinguish two levels of activity management:
1) The level of knowledge and rules. It is where new actions are planned and managed. This is a manual control mode, when we consciously control everything. The most important thing at this level is to check the results of the action, whether it corresponds to the tasks set. In short, I did - I checked.
2) Level of skills. This is the level of habitual actions that we perform according to a rigid automated scheme. This is the autopilot mode, and in it we do most everyday affairs. As a rule, we do all these things successfully, but there is also the possibility of errors. These are the very errors of absent-mindedness, from the series "went into a room, got into another." The most dangerous thing about automatism is that we often do not check the results of actions. According to the scheme, done - forgot. The difficulty is that when we do something completely familiar, then the verification step is eliminated - why check actions that are completely automated? And sometimes you still need to.
IN Everyday life it is important to understand better typical mistakes absent-mindedness, so that they do not take them completely by surprise, so that they can lay straws. One can single out the schemes of these errors, find the weak points of these schemes and pay special attention to them, arbitrarily - to know where it is subtle. This is hardly 100% possible, due to the same routinization. But at least some mistakes can be avoided. What if we escape fatal error? The work on the classification of errors was carried out by the same James Reason, for which humanity should thank him, if it were more attentive to psychology.
Rizon divided errors into three types:
1) Actually, mistakes are mistakes. They occur at the stage of intention - these are planning errors. They are based on incorrect calculations, false assumptions, underestimation of various factors. Undercalculation or incorrect calculation, in short. One client complained to me that everything he had planned failed. He even deduced from this the theory that he was pursued by evil fate. We analyzed how he has these disruptions of plans and it became clear that when planning he does not take into account the variability of circumstances. In his inner picture, the circumstances are static - they are just waiting for him to come and take advantage of them. But in reality, circumstances change, and if this is not taken into account, breakups will occur so often that one can believe in evil fate.
2) Gaps - lapses. To fulfill the plan, you need to remember it well - what needs to be done, what means are needed for this, what is the sequence of actions, what should be the result. Gaps are errors of fixing, storing and restoring the plan in memory. With one of my friends, this often happens with shops: I went to buy greens, but I bought a cake. It turns out that the image of the cake erased the original plan. I understand her - chocolate and biscuit are stronger stimuli than cilantro and dill. Basil is another matter) It also happens that the plan has changed under the influence of circumstances, but the old plan is remembered better, and therefore we continue to fulfill it, although we need to act differently.
3) Slips - slips. These are errors that occur during the execution of scheduled actions. Most often they are associated with attention errors - when it is fixed on something else that does not correspond to the plan. I especially love it when instead of saving you click on the close button, ahhh! It is possible that such errors may have deep unconscious reasons, internal conflicts. For example, I could delete a text because deep down I disagree with it. But it often happens without much sense - it's just that attention has jumped somewhere in the wrong direction if it is too mobile. Or missed, if too inert. Here, psychophysiological states also play big role- excitement, excitement. Or lack of excitement, fatigue.
How can this classification be used in real life? During the planning stage, you can formulate goals more precisely, learn more about the circumstances in which you are going to perform your actions. Check the validity of your assumptions. At the stage of saving the plan, it is important to double-check yourself - did I remember everything, did I miss anything. And at the execution stage, monitor your actions more carefully - do not press the buttons too hastily, for example. In short, keep a little more arbitrariness.
It is especially important to understand your current state - what is happening to me now, what I think about, what emotions I experience. The better you understand, the better you manage. It is also important to remember that no one is immune from mistakes. After all, if you set yourself the task of completely avoiding mistakes, then it is quite possible that the impossibility of this task will cause a stupor - it will make attention sticky and stuck. Or, conversely, jumping with excitement. A more realistic goal is to minimize errors as much as possible. And some actions can be abandoned for a while if the state does not have. For example, do not drive when hysterical or sleepy.
To be continued.
It is they who forget to take off their shoe covers when they leave the clinic, and slap their blue plastic legs to the delight of passers-by. It is they who, after searching for glasses for two hours and seething with annoyance, find them on their foreheads. They are the ones crossing the road at red lights, counting the migratory ducks in the sky. They are people from an amazing tribe - the scattered ones.
General Facts
An absent-minded person can absolutely do nothing with his behavior! His head is set up like that. Thoughts hover somewhere far away, so he is very surprised to find himself on an unfamiliar street or at a lecture in physics. After all, the just absent-minded fought in his mind with King Arthur and even almost defeated him ...
A distracted person has a lot of thoughts in his head at the same time, and his attention is dispersed. It is the absent-minded who forget change in the store - 4,523 rubles "for tea". Or, on the contrary, having taken the change, after a couple of hours they return and try to prove that they did not give anything to them, turning out their wallet and jacket pockets to be sure. A hole is certainly found in the pocket, and the lost change calmly rustles and strums in the lining. The distracted one is terribly embarrassed, apologizes for a long time and runs away for a chocolate bar.
An absent-minded person can walk all day in a T-shirt back to front and in a top-down hat, without even noticing that they are giggling after him. Because right now the absent-minded invents a perpetual motion machine, moreover, he almost invented it! But, what a shame, near the house I rode on a banana peel, stuffed a bump and completely forgot what I was thinking about!
By the way, about cones. Distracted people often forget to look in the mirror, so they often become the object of ridicule. It is on the forehead of the scattered one that they write “fool” with toothpaste in the pioneer camp, and he naively walks with this decoration until the lights out. Because, while washing my face, I accidentally brushed my teeth three times, but forgot to wash my forehead.
An absent-minded person never remembers where he put his passport or policy, although he swore a hundred times to himself to keep a separate folder for them. He got a daddy, but where is she? Or at least what it looks like? After many hours of searching, the treasured "daddy" is in an old felt boot on the mezzanine, behind a jar of cucumbers, under a broken umbrella. The absent-minded sighs with relief, pulls out his passport and shifts the folder to a more convenient place - under the bed, in a suitcase with nails.
How to get rid of distraction?
Absent-mindedness is the inability to focus on one thing and “walking in the clouds”. The reasons may be different. A person can be a dreamer and romantic by nature, who generally cares little about everyday issues. The second reason is fatigue and constant stress. If you don’t get enough sleep, don’t like your job, are forced to take in a huge amount of information a day, then it’s no wonder that your body is malfunctioning. Takova defensive reaction- a tired, overloaded brain falls into hibernation and hangs a formidable sign on the door "Do not wake!".
In any case, you should follow a few rules:
1. Get enough sleep and get plenty of rest. Go on vacation, and spend it away from the TV, loading your brain with unnecessary news and talk shows. Better change the situation, go to the sea, or at least get out into nature more often. Nervous system will certainly say “thank you!”, and you will return to work as fresh as a cucumber.
2. Develop intellectually. But reading books, even very good ones, can even aggravate absent-mindedness and completely drown the mind in the "world of dreams." Better solve crosswords and puzzles, collect a Rubik's cube, play backgammon or chess. More can help younger brother solve problems in algebra and geometry. In general, do what will improve logical thinking.
3. Take vitamins! At least once in a while it's worth drinking full course any multivitamin preparations. Things like Ginkgo biloba, ginseng, B vitamins, lecithin and good old Glycine are very good for the brain. You can consult a doctor, and he will prescribe special drugs for concentration and memory.
4. Eat right. The brain loves nuts and dried fruits (especially dates), fresh vegetables(the leader is Brussels sprouts), oranges, pineapples, muesli, fish, kefir. You can even take extra fish oil. And our memory does not like fast food in all its manifestations.
5. Make up your own rules. Be sure to follow at least some points: “before leaving, check the iron, stove and look in the mirror”, “count the change without leaving the cash register”, “carry the key strictly in the right pocket of the bag” (otherwise you have it lying around, where no hitting!). For particularly scattered rules, it is recommended to hang on the front door.
The idea for this article came to me yesterday when I left the clinic in shoe covers (not for the first time, by the way…). So, she and about me get back a little. Or maybe about you. Good luck to everyone scattered!
P.S. By the way, Albert Einstein was also terribly absent-minded. One day, Einstein was walking down the street in thought and met his friend. He invited him to his home:
Come to me in the evening, I will have Professor Stimson."
The friend was surprised
But I am Stimson!
Einstein objected:
It doesn't matter, come anyway.
Well, who will remember Professor Stimoson? Who remembers Einstein? That's the same.
Anna Glyanchenko
I like
How do we imagine the "typical scientist"? Tousled hair, an obsessive look and always something ridiculous: in behavior, in appearance. Such an image has evolved over the centuries due to the well-known distraction of great minds and their ability to get into curious situations. Here is our top 10 weirdo geniuses.
Thales of Miletus- philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, whose name opened the list of "seven wise men", the most respected Greek thinkers and figures. IN Ancient Greece people respectfully treated philosophers and philosophy as a science, but the phrase “if you are so smart, then why are you so poor” could be heard addressed to the great Thales. In response to these reproaches (and these are reproaches of the uselessness of philosophy), Thales used his knowledge of astronomy and, speaking modern language, monetized them. So, thanks to the stars, the scientist made a conclusion about the upcoming good harvest, bought up all the oil presses in Miletus for next to nothing in the winter and got rich on this. Thus Thales proved that philosophers can easily make a fortune for themselves, but this does not bother them the least. And they care about one passion - science. This preoccupation with science made Thales a symbol of the absent-minded scientist. characteristic history Plato talked about Thales. Once a sage, walking down the street, while studying the night sky, looked at the stars so much that he fell into a hole. And in response to loud lamentations, the maid who accompanied him on a walk said: “Oh, Thales! Unable to see what is under your feet, do you think to know what is in heaven?
Professor William Archibald Spooner was a very remarkable figure at Oxford University. The professor was an albino, but he became famous among his colleagues and students not for this. Spooner's distraction was legendary. So, they say that once he wrote a letter to another professor with a request to come and provide some help, but at the end of the letter he added that the issue had already been resolved, no help was needed and no need to come. But the most important thing is his absent-mindedness in speech, thanks to which even a separate term, "spoonerism", appeared. This is the name of an accidental or intentional reservation, when syllables or sounds change in two adjacent words in a sentence, which affects the meaning. famous example from Russian literature - in S. Marshak's poem "That's how absent-minded": "respected deeply respected wagon". Among the legendary spoonerisms of Sir Spooner himself, for example, is this: The Lord is a shoving leopard (The Lord is our pushing leopard) instead of a loving shepherd (loving shepherd).
Isaac Newton. It is impossible to be such a brilliant scientist and at the same time an attentive and adequate person. They say that Newton could get lost in his house, heading for dinner, and finding himself on the street, return to the room, but forget to eat. One day, leaving the living room for a bottle of wine to treat friends, he forgot what he was going for, and automatically returned to his office and sat down to work (imagine the disappointment of friends who unsuccessfully waited for both Newton and wines). Rumor has it that in his absent-mindedness, Newton could leave the house not quite dressed, and only the obvious laughter of those around him made him assess the situation and return home.
André-Marie Ampère became the character of many historical anecdotes due to his absent-mindedness. For example, while walking near the Paris Academy of Sciences, Ampère stopped on the bridge, looking with interest at a small pebble that he noticed on his way. Taking a watch out of his pocket, he realized that he was late, and quickly moved forward, throwing an expensive watch into the water, putting a pebble in his pocket. Another time, while at the Academy of Sciences, Ampère complained to the chairman that a certain gentleman had taken his place. He was surprised to be told that the place he points to really belongs to “that gentleman”: Ampère, forgetting where he had just sat, mistakenly claimed the place of Emperor Napoleon himself. But the most funny story another. Leaving the house, the scientist left a note on the door: "Ampere will be at home by evening." Having been released much earlier, he returned home in the afternoon, but having found a note, disappointedly left to wander until the evening. The scientist forgot that he, in fact, is Ampère himself.
Adam Smith- another outstanding scientist, whose absent-mindedness has grown together with his fame. One day during breakfast, while chatting animatedly with a visitor, Adam Smith put the sandwich he was holding into the teapot. Without noticing this, he immediately poured himself some tea, took a sip and exclaimed with displeasure that this was the worst tea he had ever tasted. Another time, distraction led him, like Thales, to a fall. The curiosity is that the scientist thought while inspecting the tannery and managed to fall into a waste pit.
Archimedes. Everyone knows his famous exclamation "Eureka!". We supplement the episode with details. The creation of the great work "On Floating Bodies" is connected with the request of King Hieron. The king ordered a crown of pure gold, but when he received it, he was worried if the master had replaced some of the gold with a less valuable metal. And he asked Archimedes to find out what the crown was made of. The idea that this can be checked by immersing the crown in water came to Archimedes during bath procedures. Without hesitation, he joyfully jumped out of the bathhouse shouting “Eureka! Eureka!”, completely oblivious to his own nakedness. Such devotion to science may have played a fatal role for him: according to one version, the Roman soldier killed Archimedes because he was busy with his drawings, which made the Roman extremely angry.
Alexander Borodin is a great example of how talented person talented in everything. The outstanding Russian composer, chemist and physician Borodin skillfully got into awkward situations due to distraction. Then at the border checkpoint he could not answer the question of the official, what is the name of his wife, and desperately asked her “Katya, for God's sake, what is your name?”. He constantly forgot that he was not a guest, starting in the middle of the evening party to convulsively gather “home”. That, dressed in military uniform with all the regalia, left the house, forgetting to put on his pants. And they also say that Alexander Borodin lost most of his symphony almost before the premiere - and had to rewrite it.
Pal Erdesh, one of the most famous and prolific mathematicians of the 20th century: in terms of the number of scientific articles written by him, he has no equal among his contemporaries. Pal Erdős was known not so much as an absent-minded person, but as an eccentric scientist with in a special way life. The mathematician was nicknamed the “wandering scientist”: he spent his whole life on the road, moving from one scientific event to another. He appeared on the doorstep with the words "my brain is open" and, after a fruitful scientific collaboration, set off again. It's no secret that he used drugs. Lifestyle and addiction to amphetamines added to his image of strangeness. They say that he could fall asleep in the middle of a noisy party, and that he could not cook his own food or pay his bills on his own: in general, he was not adapted to everyday life. But he had a great sense of humor. So, when asked about his own age, he answered that he was 2.5 billion years old, arguing this as follows: “When I was very young, scientists thought that the age of the Earth was 2 billion years, and now it is believed that it is already 4 billion years old. .5 billion years.
Norbert Wiener, American mathematician and philosopher, founder of cybernetics and theory artificial intelligence, was a child prodigy: he defended his doctorate at Harvard University at the age of 18. There were myths about his forgetfulness at the University of Massachusetts. One day, a scientist called the police to report his car stolen, only because he couldn't remember where he had parked. Having met a person at the university and talked, he could then ask the interlocutor in which direction he was heading in order to understand: if from the canteen, then he had already had lunch. One of Wiener's habits was the way he walked, constantly touching the wall with his hand. According to Wiener, thanks to this, you can always find a way out of the maze.
Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician and mechanic, was completely immersed in science, which affected his relationship with reality. Here is a typical story: "Monsieur Hadamard, I see Madame Hadamard has already left the city." “But how did you guess?!” - "You have a tie under your right ear ...". Detachment from worldly concerns almost played bad joke with the scientist's family. During the German occupation of France, he was lucky enough to emigrate with his whole family to the United States. But out of distraction, Hadamard forgot his visas. Upon arrival in the United States, they had to spend some time in prison until their rights as emigrants were restored through the court. True, after a successful court decision, Hadamard suddenly refused to leave prison: in the prison library, he found most interesting book on American history and really wanted to finish reading it.
There lived a scattered man
On Basseinaya Street.
He sat down on the bed in the morning
Started putting on a shirt
Put his hands in the sleeves -
It turned out they were pants.
S. Ya. Marshak
A funny children's poem by Samuil Marshak tells us about the absurd behavior of a man who either puts a frying pan on his head instead of a hat, or gets into an uncoupled wagon, setting off on a journey ...
A seemingly harmless feature that causes irony and laughter threatens with serious consequences for the safety of the soul. What is distraction? And who is he - an absent-minded person?
“If I were asked to describe my life in one word, it would be the word “fatigue”. And although no physical labor, there are no supernatural loads or health problems, I still get tired to death. It feels like the morning itself brings not cheerfulness, but fatigue. But a cup of coffee, a shower, a couple of calls and my favorite tunes on the radio bring me to my senses and I start my day. A day that will again end with fatigue and the understanding that I did not have time to do anything, absolutely nothing ... "
If our descendants made a film about us today, then the portrait modern man would be something like this: a middle-aged man, constantly somewhere in a hurry. He tries to bypass traffic jams in the city, choose the shortest path to the intended place, he always half-runs, in a hurry, because he has a lot to do. He certainly has a telephone in his hands, this new organ of a modern person, which is sometimes more important than a hand or even a head. The person speaks excitedly or types with quick habitual finger movements short messages. He always does not have time, he fusses. He tries to solve all the problems at the same time, and this rhythm of life makes him extremely stressful.
Julius Caesar?
“I sometimes hate my phone and all these gadgets. There is always something for me. All kinds of applications are loaded into the phone, and every now and then someone calls me, writes, gets in touch. I'm in literally words sleep with phone. In our time, no one is surprised by the abilities of Julius Caesar, now many can do several things at the same time.
Why does the absent-minded Marshakovsky do such strange things? Well, for example, why does he put gloves on his heels instead of felt boots, or why does he go to the cashier to buy a bottle of kvass?
If in real life you ask an absent-minded person why this happened, then the answer will most often be this: “My head is full of business.” A distracted person is unable to concentrate on what he is doing. Performing some super-important work, he will be distracted by questions that arise along the way. He will begin to solve them, and he will think about abandoned work. Talking about "important", he will be distracted by calls, SMS and messages in in social networks. Returning home after work, he will begin to think about problems at work, getting annoyed with loved ones. When he comes to work, he will reproach himself that he spends so little time with his family and does not know at all how his relatives live. The bottom line is that his thoughts are rarely occupied with what he is directly in this moment does. Contrary to the words of the famous psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, who said that “a person becomes what he is thanks to the work that he makes his own”, a person is scattered everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “To surrender to the cause” requires the concentration of the mind, will and spiritual strength, the absence of fuss and the presence of firmness. This is precisely what the scattered man lacks.
His phone has a lot of missed calls, sms, letters. He is horrified by the volume of cases and information that has fallen, but deep down he himself desperately craves it. After all, this creates an image of oneself as a person in demand, necessary, significant. No matter how indignant a person is, distracted by a “heap of things” and that “everyone wants something from him,” in reality he is looking for this. This can be understood if you leave him without a phone and the opportunity to "solve things." The state of helplessness will quickly be replaced by irritation, which in turn will turn into despondency and even risk developing into depression.
Who is so scattered?
A misleading impression may be created that an absent-minded person is an exceptionally busy, business man. In reality, this is not entirely true. Absent-mindedness is a personal feature of a person who does not pay attention to himself and lives negligently, surrendering to momentary impulses. Therefore, one who does not have all the benefits of civilization, lives in a limited social life. You can often hear complaints from him that "time flies" and goes nowhere. And if the transience of time has always worried the mind and soul of a thinking person, then the question of where it goes and why the days are monotonous and filled with fuss is more often voiced by a distracted person. He will become distracted by every little thing, getting out of bed. The important to-do list may remain a “dead” piece of paper, because the task cannot be reached in any way due to various unplanned stops on the way to the list. The problem is that the set goal remains only an external factor, the soul of the scattered is not given to anything concrete.
Absent-mindedness as a vice, of course, applies to both men and women - sin has no gender differences. Although, if you remember, initially a male hunter is focused on prey, he must have a quick reaction and look around, escaping from dangers and following the trail of the “mammoth”. A woman, as the keeper of the hearth, has a different task: she sits at home and, delving into herself, her thoughts, is busy with what she sees in front of her: a hearth, a child, urgent household tasks. Perhaps this difference plays a role in the fact that a woman is by nature more prone to introspection and introspection, while a man, to a certain extent, must “look around”, and it is perhaps more difficult for him to delve into himself for this reason.
Don't waste time
“I don’t know how to rest and I don’t even like it. More precisely, I leisure, that would be more correct. Although sometimes strange things happen to me. Sometimes I can sleep through the weekend. In the truest sense of the word. I will get up to drink tea or eat something - and go back to sleep. Apparently, the body requires such a rest. But to be honest, I don't feel rested at all. On the contrary, after such hibernations, despondency overcomes me, and I cannot immediately enter into my usual rut. But life takes its toll, and through a short time I'm back on horseback, and life is seething ... ".
A distracted person does not know how to rest. not in vain one famous doctor He said: "He who does not know how to rest, he does not know how to work." Rest, like your work, you need to be able to surrender. An absent-minded person will go on tour, but there the first thing will be to look for wi-fi, find out if there is satellite TV, leaf through magazines, just go shopping or drink alcohol. Even on vacation, he will habitually fuss, creating an aura of employment, importance and exclusivity around him. No matter how he says that it is a pleasure for him to lie down with a book in the middle of nature, he will not be able to lie like that for a long time. Most likely, again and again there will be something that distracts him. It will be the same with the "home" scattered. He will open a book, turn on the TV, answer calls, in a word, do anything, just not to give himself at least for a short time to rest.
Sometimes, however, an absent-minded person is knocked down by illness. He doesn't know how to get sick either. Any illness requires a person to focus on his physical condition, treatment, on himself. For the distracted, this is a punishment. He will say that he has no time to get sick, and, justified by urgent matters, he will become accustomed to "doing something." Probably, it was for him that all high-speed drugs were created. The distracted have no time for pain! Everyone knows the destructive effect of "effective" fast pills on the organ system and the body as a whole. So it is with the soul of the absent-minded, who cannot endure hardships and sorrows. It is simply impossible for him to surrender to any one experience.
Movement is life?
“I am very satisfied with my position. On the one hand, I am a leader and people are subordinate to me. On the other hand, I am not the boss on whom something really depends. My function is to control everything that happens in our department. It takes a lot of strength - the human factor, you know ... "
Despite the fact that a distracted person, it would seem, is constantly on the move, he is little capable of real action, an act.
He will bypass situations where he is required to make a choice, make a decision with the subsequent bearing of responsibility for it. In such cases, he will say: "Time will tell", "Everything will form by itself." It may look like philosophy successful person, in reality, this is the fear of a concentrated, balanced decision, for which you will have to answer both in case of success and in case of failure. No matter how original and extraordinary the scattered person may be, he essentially lives like the majority or as it should be. He simply does not have the mental and spiritual strength to look for something, and then defend what he has found, even in front of himself. That is why he easily agrees with the opinion of the boss or any authority. He has a solid supply of "authoritative opinions" for all occasions. It is about him, an absent-minded man, that he is the master of his word: "I wanted - I gave, I wanted - I took it back." The reason for this is the lack of a value foundation, and in this case, life will go “downwind”.
Little nothings of life
"I love my wife. Of course, over the years, the intensity of feelings has subsided, and I definitely miss what I used to be. But she is an attentive friend, a caring hostess. I feel comfortable with her. But when I come to work, I see the sweet smile of our secretary. No torment and pangs of conscience, I smile at her and seem to invite her to light flirting. After she is offended that I become cold. I tried to explain several times that my smiles, compliments and “talks for life” are just such a non-committal game, but I saw tears in her eyes. Wife in the same vein. He may be offended that I did not serve a glass of water or did not help open the door. And I'm just surprised how she remembers everything! But the main thing is that there is a feeling that I love her. And all these little things, reproaches only spoil life ... "
He will explain all his unfulfilled promises, gaps in memory, inattention by being busy. He says that he loves, but at the same time he will forget what may be important to another. It will just forget. Then he will begin to apologize and say that his head was full of another important task, that he was mentally planning a difficult conversation with his boss or counting the budget for the month. Was it not about the absent-minded Clive Lewis wrote on behalf of Balamut, giving advice to the young demon Gnusik on seducing a person: “The more often he is immersed in feelings that are not connected with action, the less he is capable of action and, ultimately, the less he is capable of feeling” . Along with the word “fatigue”, you hear the word “emptiness” more and more often from the absent-minded, and this seems strange, seeing such a active life. But emptiness is an inner experience, not at all connected with the way of life or occupation.
origins
Absent-mindedness, at first glance, looks like lack of will, atrophy of the will. While in reality we are dealing with what the Swiss psychiatrist R. Laing called the “split self”. The personality of a person seems to break up into many subpersonalities, a person does not have integrity and runs into vanity, escaping from a meeting with something important in himself. The subpersonalities of this “split self” cannot find each other in any way. common language. So, one part of him may want one thing, and the other - the exact opposite. That is why, when committing some act, he is able to both repent of it and justify himself at the same time. It is as if there is an argument going on in him, and it is impossible to say that there is a “true self” in him, since he has long ceased to be the master of himself. Thus, with the seeming activity of an absent-minded person, in essence, personally, he remains completely passive, inert, he is simply carried by the whirlpool of life, in which he does not have time to ask himself the main questions. But he cannot think about it, since his life is filled with pseudo-meanings and a huge number of cases, calls, contacts.
It is difficult to say whether absent-mindedness, like a wormhole of original sin, made a person move further and further away from God, or falling away from God led a person to run away from the place where he risks meeting his true self and consciously choose his Path.
It is worth remembering that, as the philosopher put it, "in each of us is a void the size of God." To peer into this emptiness, one needs concentration, courage and faith that this emptiness will not absorb, will not dissolve. You can escape from emptiness by fleeing into the vanity of your affairs and rejoice that anxiety has receded. In essence, the black abyss of emptiness has grown to such a size that it has swallowed it up, and a distracted man runs in the dark, trying to convince himself that there is a beautiful rich life around him.
You can start a dozen diaries, carefully plan the day, month, life. You can take courses in time management, but all this will be like putting things in order in a house in which the foundation is collapsing.
“When anxiety and unwillingness to understand the essence of this anxiety lead him away from true joy, when habit deprives fussy pleasures of pleasantness, and the excitement of feelings firmly binds to them (fortunately, this is how habit acts on pleasure), you will see that his wandering attention can attract anything. You don't even need to use good book who he really loves to keep him from prayer, work and sleep; a column of ads from the evening paper will suffice. You will make him lose time not only in conversations that are interesting for him with people he likes, but in conversations with those who are indifferent to him, on completely boring topics. He won't do anything for you at all. You will keep him until late at night not in a noisy company, but in a cold room, by an extinct fireplace. All his healthy external activity can be suppressed and nothing given in return, so that in the end he can say, as one of my patients said when he arrived here: “Now I see that for most of my life I did not do what I should have done. , nor what I wanted, ”we read from Lewis all the same instructions of the experienced demon Balamut on seducing a person from the Truth.
Afterword
Once I happened to attend a seminar of my colleague as an assistant in a group psychological help for people suffering from emotional burnout and chronic fatigue. My colleague is not a church person, but a seeker. When asked by one of the participants how to find oneself and “one’s own” in life, to my surprise, he took out the prayer of the Optina Elders. In prayer, in his opinion, lies the answer to this question. Last words prayers “lead my will and teach me to pray, believe, hope, endure, forgive and love everyone” gave birth to silence in the group. And it was felt that in this silence there was no fuss, anxiety receded, and something important was born in the soul.
Anna Lelik
About a distracted and attentive life
The sons of the world recognize absent-mindedness as innocent, and the Holy Fathers recognize it as the beginning of all evils.
A person devoted to absent-mindedness has a very light, most superficial concept about all subjects, and the most important ones.
An absent-minded person is usually unstable: his heart sensations are devoid of depth and strength, and therefore they are fragile and short-lived. As a moth flutters from flower to flower, so does an absent-minded person pass from one earthly pleasure to another, from one vain concern to another. The absent-minded is alien to the love of one's neighbor: he looks indifferently at the misfortune of people and easily lays on them burdens that are unbearable.
Sorrows have a strong effect on the absent-minded precisely because he does not expect them. He expects some joy. If grief is strong, but transient, then the distracted one soon forgets it in the noise of entertainment. Long-term grief overwhelms him.
Absent-mindedness itself punishes the devotee: everything bores him with time, and he, as having not acquired any solid knowledge and impressions, indulges in languishing, endless despondency.
He who leads a scattered life directly contradicts the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ by his life.
All the saints carefully avoided absent-mindedness. Incessantly, or at least as often as possible, they concentrated in themselves, listening to the movements of the mind and heart and directing them according to the testament of the Gospel.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov
Magazine "Family"
Most scattered hero? The legendary poem "about a man scattered from Basseynaya Street" turned 78 years old. Lines about the ridiculous antics of an eccentric
Who among us does not know the poems of S.Ya. Marshak about the amazing Scattered from Basseinaya Street? And where did he come from? Marshak himself spoke about it this way:
I quote - "Very many of my readers asked me if I depicted Professor I.A. Kablukov in my" Scattered ". The same question was asked by my brother - the writer M. Ilyin - and I.A. Kablukov himself. him that my "Scattered" is collective image
, the professor slyly shook his finger at him and said:
"Oh, no, my friend! Your brother, of course, aimed at me!"
There was some truth in this. When I wrote my playful poem, I partly had in mind the charming and - inimitable in his absent-mindedness - a wonderful scientist and an excellent person - I.A. Kablukov. That's all I can tell you on this matter."
In Marshak's drafts, his hero was often called Ivan Bashmakov, but in one of the drafts it is directly written:
"In Leningrad lives
Ivan Kablukov,
He calls himself
Heel Ivanov.
The only difference is that the real Professor Kablukov lived in Moscow.
Andrei Bely captured the image of Kablukov in his memoirs in more detail. But he also brings not genuine speech errors of an absent-minded scientist, but parodies of them, composed by Ellis (L. Kobylinsky). Andrey Bely writes: “A most incomparable number played out by Ellis circulated through the Moscow living rooms; under the name “Ivan Alekseevich Kablukov” ... and most of the jokes about the confusion of words and letters of Kablukov, now classical, have a source NOT of Kablukov, but Ellis’s improvisation; who improvised on the basis of the most scrupulous study of the model; and his caricature was real in its artistry; I affirm: the famous "Kablukov" phrase does NOT belong to the professor:
"The famous chemist Lavoisier - I, that is, not me: not at all ... He did experiments: the shovel shook, and a piece of the eye fell into the glass"
(instead of "the flask burst, and a piece of glass got into the eye");
expressions "not at all" and "I, that is, not me" -
the usual phrases of Kablukov; this phrase is a quote from Ellis's brilliant improvisation, as well as "Mendelshutkin" attributed to Kablukov instead of "Mendeleev and Menshutkin" - also a quote from the same parody (!!!) ...
... he [Kablukov] lost the ability to utter a distinctly simple phrase, falling into ... sound and etymological monstrosities with which he immortalized himself in Moscow; and wishing to pronounce the combination of the words "chemistry and physics", he pronounced "chemist and physics"; and then, recollecting himself, - "not at all," - he began to explain with new monstrosities, in which "I", that is, not "I" at all, figured every now and then.
... It is interesting that in Veltman's story "Wizard" there are two absent-minded eccentrics at once: Dyakov and Dayanov. Dayanov reproduces the features of the Scattered Man many decades before Marshak. The footman there asks Dayanov:
"What would you like to wear?"
Dayanov replies: "What, what, what, what! Damn you, what! Coat on your feet, pants on your shoulders!"
Few people know that even before the Scattered, in 1926, a children's book by Vladimir Pyast "Lev Petrovich" was published. The hero of this poem is the same absent-minded eccentric who
"...every day
Putting on a live cat
Instead of a hat on one side ...
.... For firewood at the barn
In the yard he was waiting for the tram ... "
Piast himself was also one of the prototypes of the Scattered.
V. Shklovsky wrote: "Once ... Piast swallowed several hot coals and drank ink from unbearable pain ... I came to Piast in the hospital. He explained ... that he acted correctly, because there is tannin in the ink, tannin binds and therefore it should help with burns. The ink was aniline - they did not bind. "
And in the drafts of "Scattered" we find lines about this particular case:
"Instead of tea, he poured
In a cup of tea ink..."
So it turns out that the "Scattered" man still had several prototypes (at least - I. Kablukov, V. Pyast and 2 literary predecessors - Dayanov and Lev Petrovich), that is, as Marshak himself said - COLLECTIVE IMAGE :-)
