The Value Of Loss

and how it directs behavior...

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

In a recent post, I spoke about safety and how it is not something to take for granted. I got a very interesting comment that intrigued me.

Athena, "The Illusion of Safety" is a perfect continuation/nuance of your recent article "Normalcy Biases Are dangerous". It is not nature and/or others that are potentially dangerous (which they are) but our biases, naivety, arrogance, and self-indulgence. By the way, it strikes me a bit that, on the one hand, psychopaths like you (as you yourself have stated on more than one occasion on Quora) have a greater attraction/tolerance/lack of fear towards danger due to certain traits of impulsivity, curiosity, etc. But, on the other hand, you occasionally warn us against the dangers of not being aware of potential threats, red flags, etc. I wonder if you could explain a bit more about this apparent paradox (if it is a paradox at all).

I thought about this for a while, and I believe that it is because I have a different loss evaluation than neurotypicals, and because their losses have a much higher potential to be devastating for them, I speak about these dangers because I both know that they are there, and because I have observed many times this inability to see them resulting in these terrible effects from loss that was preventable.

Loss is a great teacher for neurotypicals. It can be the result of bad decisions, or it could just be a natural part of life. Death is an example of this. It is something that children should be aware of through the natural process of losing pets. Yes, it is painful, but it allows them to understand their own grief and how to navigate it successfully. Whenever an adult that I know loses a pet they are so taken by the loss they consider never having a pet again so they never have to feel like they are feeling when that pet dies.

Inevitably, however, they end up missing the companionship and will bring another pet into their lives to love. If you experience loss in your young years, you will learn that you are able to handle it, and get through it. It is valuable, and it is those lessons that allow people to be able to open up to the potential pain because the positives outweigh the negatives.

People that have had pets their whole lives often also have the mentality of being mindful of their age. Many older adults will evaluate how many years they think they may have left in this world and try to plan around it. They may adopt an older pet that won’t live as long as they will, and they do this to spare the animal the pain of their own death. They would rather suffer the loss than to leave their furry baby to suffer in their absence. Loss taught them that this is the right thing to do.

Some losses are things that are avoidable, but they are also rare. Often in these scenarios, there is no previous opportunity to learn about them, and these types can be life-changing, if not life-ending. In that post about not taking your safety for granted, I used many examples such as finding your front door ajar when you come home. Sure, you could have forgotten, but why take the risk? Seriously people, why do so many people just decide that everything is honky-dory when they find this, and go traipsing all over a potential crime scene that may have an axe-wielding manic hiding in the closet? But I digress…

Sort of, actually it leads me to my next topic of discussion, which is a show that I am watching on Hulu called, I Survived a Serial Killer. Interesting show, give it a watch if this sort of thing interests me. I watch this sort of thing because I like to know the patterns that tend to get people in trouble. It helps build my database of “Don’t be an idiot, Athena”. This is a necessary database that is under constant construction. How do people f*ck up and end up dealing directly with a serial killer?

Well, not all of them, but a lot of them make really bad decisions. Do you know how many accept rides from serial killers? What is wrong with y’all? Nearly no one offering you a ride has good intentions. Anyway, this post isn’t about lecturing you. I did that in the safety one, so I will move on to my point, which is, the people that survived these attacks experienced an insane amount of loss that oftentimes could have been avoided.

When you watch this show, even though for pretty much all of them the attacks were years ago, the effects of those attacks are written all over them. Their body language, their life choices (some good, some bad), their emotional state, and their ability to function in the world are changed drastically. These are losses that they did not need to endure, and while many of them have gone on to do things to help others, such as setting up charities, or doing talks about their experiences, it does not appear to me that any of them prefer that it happened in the first place. I think all of them would trade that experience and live a different life.

I have had bad things happen to me in my life. These things can and have changed the course of my life as they do for all people. The difference is that I don’t suffer from these bad events. They are just things that happened, and unless something specifically reminds me of these things, I don’t even think of them. Sometimes they cross my mind because I find them humorous. I have also made decisions that other people found wildly questionable that I was fortunate to have worked out in my favor, but had they not it could have gone very badly for me.

This inability to feel loss is two-sided. On the one side, I am unaffected by things that would destroy someone else, on the other, I am at higher risk for making bad decisions because I don’t have that governor in place that says, “this might cause irreparable damage and emotional harm, please stop process”. I know I don’t have that, and am constantly building the database of, “Athena, don’t be an idiot and do stupid sh*t.” To build something like this I have to understand the world, and I have to understand what is possible. Otherwise, I would just blissfully ignore serious warning signs and do what I want to do. That doesn’t bode well for me and my long-term survival.

However, because I have spent all this time and energy to artificially create what should be innate to many people, I have found that while y’all have the gift of fear, you also have the incredible gift of not paying attention, or even if you are, convincing yourself:

No, no it isn’t. So why do I warn you guys?

You have no idea how many times I have conversations with people and their database of, “don’t be an idiot”, is nearly empty. They go purely on what they feel, but then they are so completely checked out half the time that they miss all the red flags. I tell you guys these things because I have watched so many people make so many bad decisions and suffer incredible losses because of it. The operative word there is, suffer. That word has weight in your world, and it seems like something that you would want to avoid, but so often I see people just convincing themselves that this guy:

really did break down and needs to use your phone. He doesn’t. Don’t open the door to that guy. Whatever he has going on, it doesn’t work for you and living until tomorrow morning.

Let’s talk about a scenario that is similar that the one above. There is a knock at your door in the middle of the night. You look out and there is a woman standing there looking disheveled, distraught, and frightened. She says that she has escaped her boyfriend that has been beating her. Can’t you please open the door? This question comes from a plethora of stories that document this very thing. Someone shows up at your door claiming that they need help. In the specific retelling of this common occurrence that I heard recently where it was clear that the person at the door was a rouse, and not in need of help. It was the comments section that got interesting.

One person told of their own experience being that girl, knocking on doors bloody and afraid, and finding few people that were willing to consider opening the door. It took reading the story that she was commenting on to bring into focus why people were reluctant. She knew that she needed help, but hearing it from the other perspective made her realize that perhaps opening the door to a stranger was a bad idea. This was interesting for a couple of reasons.

1. It detailed that she was processing that event solely from the perspective of the victim. That meant that she was unable to see from the outside how this might look.

2. That event would have been what informed her actions should she ever be placed in the opposite position. Meaning, had someone come to her door in the middle of the night asking for help, if they reminded her of her own experience, she would have likely set aside any misgivings and opened the door.

Below her comment was another interesting one. Again, it was a knock on a door in the middle of the night. A woman stood there with her toddler in her arms. Her car broke down, and could she and her child come inside to get warm while they waited for help.

The person retelling this story was a child themselves when it happened and described their mother as one of the sweetest people you would ever meet, but something didn’t ring right about the situation, so she said that she would call someone for them, but they were not welcome inside. The woman with the child did not like this outcome and tried pleading her case, that her child was very cold waiting outside. The commenter's mother told them to go get some blankets to wrap the child in while they waited. This prompted the other woman to storm off in a huff.

These two situations interest me because of the dichotomy between them. The first one, on its face, appears to be more likely to be the rouse. A young woman claiming that her abusive boyfriend is hot on her trail, and to please let her in. It sounds ideally situated for her to be part of criminal activity. She gains entry, unlocks a door, and then she and her boyfriend rob the people in the house.

The second one presents a woman with a child. Most people would assume a woman is not going to involve her child in some nefarious wrongdoing, especially a toddler. I found that detail to be intriguing. If the child had been a baby, you can fake a baby. There are a lot of dolls that look remarkably lifelike, but a toddler is a different story. The child was real, which goes back to the idea that most women are not going to bring along a child for a home invasion. If for no other reason than a toddler is unpredictable and unruly. Keeping them in line while trying to corral people into doing whatever it is that you want them to do would be difficult. That tells me a great deal.

Not only is this woman not alone, but she also has multiple people that are working with her. She would not be the primary assailant. Her entire role is to gain trust, gain entry, and grant entry to those that are waiting in the wings. Whether she stepped out at that juncture, or she stayed, her focus would be the kid, not the robbery or possible murder.

When you consider her from the perspective of someone that might open the door wanting to help, the child is disarming, and makes the woman look far more vulnerable. For me, someone that doesn’t have any of the emotional heartstrings to pull on, it tells me a lot more about the situation, and tells me that there is a great deal of danger waiting behind her.

Just to follow up and give you one more thing to consider, there was another story. This one involved a child coming to a couple’s door Halloween night saying that he was lost. He didn’t know where his brother was. The people, of course, took him in and set about trying to rectify his situation. While they were discussing what to do they noticed that the little boy wasn’t in the room with them, and found him in the living room. He said he needed the bathroom and was looking for it. After some time they were able to locate the brother, and the little boy went off on his way.

That night they were the victims of a home invasion in which the husband was brutally beaten. The little boy’s job was to unlock the back door. The couple neglected to check the locks prior to heading to bed, and the “brother” that had appeared to be too old than the age he claimed, turned out to be the boy’s father. No one is going to suspect a six-year-old, right?

I tell you guys these things because they are definitely out there, and if you find yourself in one of these situations perhaps reading some of this will have you setting your emotions into the backseat and logically paying attention to what is really happening in front of you. It might just be exactly what you need to give your instincts a boost in volume. You can suffer when you lose things, and that suffering is something that will stay with you.

Your emotions can cloud your ability to see through the people that would use them against you. People that have nothing but bad intentions. From the people that play on your guilt so they can bilk you out of money, or the little kid on your doorstep that innocently says that he’s lost and needs help.

I’m not saying to not help the kid, but if you are going to, do so in a way that disallows him to access whatever it is that might be helpful to his “brother”. Call the police. Let them sort out where he lives, and what he needs. Check your locks after any stranger has access to your house, and that includes repairmen. Don’t grant access to your home to a total stranger unless you know if they come back you have the ability to defend yourself.

Loss is a valuable tool. In some cases, it teaches you what to do differently in the future. However, some of those losses are totally preventable, and the cost far too high. I won’t suffer for loss unless that loss is that of my life. That doesn’t mean that I am interested in meeting someone like the toybox killer because I think that because I don’t feel fear that I should be just fine getting into a stranger’s car. I have to learn to listen to other things and pay attention to other cues to know what to be aware of. I share them with you so perhaps they can be added to your, “don’t be an idiot” database. If you don’t have one, start building.