When Worse Is Better

If you needed to travel a mile, you’d probably walk it. Let’s say it would take you 10 minutes.

If you needed to travel two miles, you’d probably use your car. This would likely take you 5 minutes. 

Sometimes, a ‘worse’ situation (having to travel further) actually ends up being a better outcome (wasting less time traveling). 

You see this being true in lots of walks of life. 

We all have a friend who you think should leave their job  for instance. They keep complaining and it’s making them generally miserable but the pay is ok, their boss isn’t too much of a dick and it’s relatively close to home. 

Or, someone else who’s in a relationship they really shouldn’t be, but their partner’s a decent person, isn’t abusive and lets them generally do whatever they want hobbies wise. 

Because these situations aren't terrible the drive to do something about it isn’t there. Instead, these situations are carried on in a state of comfortable numbness. Thing is, if things were slightly worse, changes would be made and the long term outcome would be better. 

So when you say things like ‘I can’t believe how bad that relationship was’ or ‘I can’t believe how much pain I ended up in with my *insert body part*’ just think, at least it got you to act. At least you finally did something about it and that spurred you on to be in a better place now.

You can argue all day about whether this SHOULD be the case (and for the record, I don’t think it should) but for a lot of people this is their reality. Food for thought.