I've been struck by the response to my posting about failing to follow an intention, like the story of sleeping instead of getting out for the early-morning run. Readers have said that I have it wrong. I see it differently. It's not about choice.
The scenario in my previous post was taken from Peter Ubel's recent book, Free Market Madness. In it he writes,
"I faced a simple choice between the pleasures of sleep and the benefits of exercise, and because of how I felt about those activities that morning, I chose to snooze. No one could call this choice irrational. Indeed, given my preference that morning, it was obvious that the utility of sleep loomed much larger to me than the utility of, ugh, a morning run).
Only one problem with this story: at bedtime the previous night, I held an equally strong preference for exercise over sleep. Why else do you think I set the alarm for 5 a.m.? What's more, when I finally awoke at 6:30 a.m., I told myself I'd get up the next morning at 5 a.m. and get in that run" (p. 96).
I took issue with the whole notion of choice in the morning. In fact, thinking about the situation the moment the alarm goes off as a choice is exactly why we procrastinate at times.
There is an old story related to Zen training that goes something like this:
Novice: Master how do I attain enlightenment?
Master: Have you finished eating your rice?
Novice: Yes.
Master: Then wash your bowl.
It is this simple. If you want to mess it up with the notion of choice here (maybe I'll wash my bowl later, I don't feel like washing my bowl, I have other clean bowls, I have other things to do, . . .), you can. We often do. We call it procrastination.
Intention-action. Can it be any simpler than that?
It's worth repeating William James' thoughts on the gap between intention and action.
"The moral tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the truth and action . . ." (James, 1908; Vol 2, p. 547).
Truth is, we set an intention. Tragedy is, the link is ruptured between vision of the truth and action. Sad thing is, we rationalize this to ourselves as something other than our own lack of enlightenment.
There is an issue here we need to consider: Goal setting. How realistic are our goals? Perhaps this is the issue in this story about the unfulfilled intention. I'll return to this topic in another post.
