#somebody else's problem

[pratchettquotes]

And suddenly it dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else's problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. [...]

It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and the mundane. But it was strange. It had things in it like screws that unscrewed themselves, and little written messages for the dead.

Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

[iibislintu]

Honestly though,

becoming familiar with and internalising the SEP Field Theory (”Somebody Else’s Problem” from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) has improved my life NO END.

I mean, I’m a SUPER diligent & prone-to-stress person who always worries about things they should be doing. Accessing the SEP way of thinking helps me prioritise things.

“A random person sends a question to the school’s mailing list, and the question isn’t from my area of expertise - SOMEBODY ELSE’S PROBLEM.”

“A group of kids I don’t know aren’t wearing masks on the public transport. SOMEBODY ELSE’S PROBLEM.”

This DOESN’T mean that I won’t stop to help a person in need; that I’ll pass by if someone I don’t know asks for help; if my expertise (or sometimes just presence) is needed somewhere.

But what it DOES mean is that I can focus on the things that actually ARE my problem, my responsibility.

When something belongs in the SEP Field, then I can trust that SOMEONE ELSE will take care of it. I’m learning to trust that I’m not needed everywhere. I’m learning to say NO to things I can’t or shouldn’t do. I’m learning to say “that’s a good idea but I’m too tired right now to do anything about it.”

The SEP Field is saving my life in so many ways. Thank you Douglas Adams for inventing it!

[another-normal-anomaly]

McDonald's is now advertising sriracha and kale on their burgers. I would question the foundations of the universe, but I still can't eat burgers so I'll just skip that.

[transhermetic-witchery]

To learn to ignore, to store, to keep and sleep and shore. To learn to be, to we, to deep and next and ichor gore.

[theonlybezo]

Some people don't want to take responsibility for anything.

[chameleonsallinvermillion]

You know, the other day I was talking to a friend - good guy, overly intellectual but he does his best - and he brought up some subject or other and started the whole debate thing. He was calm, almost infuriatingly so, and accused me of “thinking with my emotions”. He didn’t mean it badly. 

But it was then that I finally got it. This thing we were debating...didn’t matter to him. It was an interesting question, one of those “controversial topics” they’d have you debate in school, an ethical conundrum, a thought experiment. But for me it was a matter of life and death. 

He didn’t think it was a game. He didn’t think it wasn’t important. He just thought it...wasn’t relevant. To him, it had no bearing at all on his life. He was discussing it because the so-called moral question interested him, not because the conclusion mattered. That’s why he wasn’t emotional. 

I don’t know but realising this made a lot of difference to me. Mostly, it made me rip him to shreds for his apathy, which I find abominable, but it also made me stop bothering to debate an issue with someone who doesn’t actually care about the issue. There’s no point fighting for something when your opponent only wants to see your technique, not win or lose. 

[peroxidepirate-blog]

The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else's Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything

In my experience, anxiety can be explained as an immunity to the Somebody Else’s Problem Field. So when I find myself getting anxious about something that really isn’t my responsibility to worry about or deal with, I’ve been picturing the thing painted pink. It seems to help a little, and it also makes me laugh.