Still adjusting to the idea of having more $ now. So far, the only thing that I have done with the extra dough is agree readily to a second evening of eating out with my friends, and of course, count it.

I find counting my money to generally be a soothing act. I know, I know, that makes me sound like the ultimate stereotypical miser, but it’s true. I like knowing exactly how much I have so I can have firm quantitative knowledge of what I have to work with.

That, in turn, gives me a feeling of security. I am the sort of person who dislikes uncertainty about key things, and who is soothed and comforted by knowledge. Being prone to anxiety as I am, it is always good for me to know things in advance so I can prepare for them instead of leaving things open-ended and hence resistant to planning.

Because here’s the thing. I don’t like surprises. That is not negotiable, not on a fundamental level. And the less secure I feel, the less I can handle the sudden things of life.

And I haven’t felt very secure in a long time. The new money should help.

So no, I don’t like surprises. Obviously that has limits. I hate spoilers precisely because I want to be surprised. But when you are talking about life instead of media consumption, I don’t do “sudden” very well.

There’s a highly obnoxious ad on TV lately based around a very irritating song where the chorus is “Everybody love’s a surprise!”. Fuck you, lady. Some people, like me, hate them.

Disliking surprises as I do, I am forced to be somewhat of a planner. By planning, I can control my future and create the sort of predictability I need in order to feel secure enough to function.

This all makes me sound deadly dull, and those of you who know me personally know that I am not. This need for predictability operates primarily on the top level of my life, the sort of things that happen to me or that I decide to do with my entire self.

On most other levels, I prefer variety in a strong way. I thrive on stimulating conversation, for instance, and that is the antithesis of predictability. And I love comedy, and the very heart of comedy is surprise.

Hear that, hack comedy writers?

And I definitely consider my desire for predictability and security to have been cancerous in my past and in my present. After all, what is more predictable than staying in your apartment all day and never going out? The outside world is an incalculable matrix of uncontrollable and unpredictable variables. Compared to the static world of one’s home, everywhere else is a nightmare of chaos and danger.

But that, of course, ignores the role of the nature of one’s own psyche in the equation. Mentally healthy people go out into the world, acquire wisdom and experience, and thus increase their own ability to handle uncertainty and chaos because now, they know how to handle a wider variety of situations and have learned over time that they can overcome whatever life throws at them.

In a sense, they bring their predictability with them. Life is less chaotic not because they insist on hyper-controlling all the variables, but because no matter what, they have one constant that remains firm : themselves.

So really, it all boils down to self-trust. It is misguided to think that you can ever control the outside world enough to provide the sense of security that hyper-predictability would provide you.

The more sensible route is to work on your own world, the one you personally live in, and concentrate your resources on making yourself better able to handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

This is hard for the mind fixed in the hyper-rational mode to grasp, because it requires accepting the inherent value of life experience instead of knowledge, and that is something that cannot be predicted, controlled, or even understood ahead of time.

You can’t tell how experience will change you. From a certain point of view, if you could, the experience itself would be unnecessary, and while that is a tempting idea for us who seek refuge in the rational, it simply does not stand up to the evidence.

Experiences change people. There can be no doubt of that. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, and of course, science reveals the same thing.

Experience changes you even if you don’t remember it afterwards. After all, the ability to remember something is a function of the conscious mind. And we have know since Freud that the conscious mind is merely the interface to the vast resources of the subconscious mind.

Being unable to find something does not mean that it has ceased to exist. It just means that your filing system has failed to keep track of it.

This all means that the real solution for use refugees from reason who have been held fixed (and decaying) by our own need for predictability is to go out in the world and experience things.

That is the vitally necessary balancing element needed to bring the sort of inner harmony that brings the security and self-confidence to face the world instead of hiding from it and be able to live in a much larger and less constrained and claustrophobic world than ever before.

To be able to walk into the sunlight and feel the wind on your skin, and know deep down in your heart that the entire world is your home, and you are truly free.

But first, you have to make a leap of faith : you have to believe that it is within your power to, through your own actions, improve yourself to that glorious point when the fear is gone and you feel content.

This cannot be proved to be true beforehand. Sure, most of the human beings on the planet could tell you that experience has made them better and a lot of those experiences were things they chose to do, but they cannot actually prove that the same would happen to you.

So it takes that tiny spark of faith, faith that you are no different than any other human being and experience, even surprises, can makes you a much better, happier, stronger, healthier person.

It is a tiny leap, and yet, it can seem like an endless chasm when you have spent yourself on the futility of seeking total control for so long.

Jump anyway. The grass is greener on the other side.

Go out and teach your soul to dance.