Complicated Life: Competing bathroom sounds

It’s the middle of the night and you’ve gotten up to pee. You’ve turned on the tap because it takes about ten minutes for the hot water to reach this bathroom—which your architect, in his wisdom, placed as far away from the water heater as possible.

Now you’re on the toilet and you realize you can’t tell if you’ve finished peeing because the only sound you can hear, of a fluid nature or otherwise, is the torrent of (probably still cold) water in the sink.

A visual check is pointless; the bowl beneath you is a yawning black pit far from the nightlight’s feeble glow. (You left the bathroom light off so you wouldn’t blind yourself and render yourself sleepless.)

What’s more, you’re not entirely sure this isn’t all a dream and you won’t shortly be running an unscheduled load of bed laundry.

And this is separate from all the usual confusing stuff that goes on during the day.

Life’s complicated.

Are we robots?

Do we really have the slightest clue why we feel, think and do the things we do?

For example, what are your feelings about tomatoes? You either like them or you don’t. But do you know why? Nope.

So is anything not like that?

Everything we do is governed by two primal instincts: to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Of course what we consider “pleasure” and “pain” varies widely—but the principle holds.

Are you religious or not? Either way, you can probably cite a bunch of intellectual reasons, but it’s an emotion-driven choice. That’s why people can argue religion till they’re blue in the face and not budge an inch.

People even kill each other over religion. Lots of them—even here in the 21st century. Yet those same people would consider it a silly waste of time to try to convince each other they should like or dislike tomatoes.