Motivation

I had a friend at one of the boarding schools I attended, one time. Dan spent his free time figuring out how to avoid dealing with people. He complained that his biggest flaw was he didn't understand why people did things. "It maybe alright for squirrels and sponges to not grasp humans, but humans really should understand other humans."

Dan and I roomed together for a semester, once. I think the same name confused the administration. My friends just had to get used to his being there. He slept in my recliner. He spent hours reading psychology books. Every once in a while, he'd ask me, "Why does X do Y in Z situation? Doesn't X realize that regardless the number of times situation Z comes up Y will always result in T? If I was doing Y in situation Z and getting T, I'd definitely change something."

I had to, at these times, reply that person A and Person B will when setting up situation Z have very different results in mind: A may actually have T in mind; while B may be thinking about sex.

"Oh. Well, are there not distinctions between how A and B set up situation Z that X might recognize?"

That was the general idea of most of our conversations. In my opinion Dan was really unmotivated. He never understood the point of understanding others or doing things that would motivate others for a specific goal. He had no specific goals and could not conceive how others might indeed have goals. His school work was done by half, he couldn't figure out why they assigned homework. "If I ace the test, I should pass the class, right?"

More often than not, I just had to shake my head. Dan would work many hours a week, a lot of all night jobs, and sleep in class. When a teacher woke him up and asked him a question, he made that teacher's class period miserable. So, teachers let him sleep through their classes, rather than endure his particular brand of why questions.

Most people just ask "Why? Why? Why?" Dan would ask in-depth questions regarding the underlying theories of the study in the subject they happened to be teaching. It was quite comon of him to reduce ideas to variables and constants and label them with a letter, a word, a phrase, or a symbol.

Dan was annoying, but he had a sense of humor and was good at spotting flaws in a plan. Which may have contributed to his complete unmotivation: He could clearly see the possible problems with both undesired and desired results and consequences. Maybe if he could not foresee the conflicts far in advance, he would have been more motivated. But he always would find the drawbacks of any plan and decide that the disadvantages of any plan always outweighed the advantages. To continue, as he was, was better than a change. "Changes are 50% to the worse." He'd say, "I don't like those odds."

The whole point of my existence for that semester was getting Dan to make spur of the moment decisions that he could then "repent of at leisure." I had fun. Once, I spoke to him about going to a beer party in a different county, the day of, at lunch. He figured out how to get out of the dorm, off campus, he had a ride, everything; in just four hours. After our last class, he laid out his plans to two other guys and me. It was brilliant. The only problem was Dan got a changed early work assignment that morning. We got in and were walking from our room to the bathroom when the RA saw us. They had been looking for Dan for an hour.

We came up with a very lame excuse, I can't remember what it was now, but we stuck to it. Dan said, "Never change a story. A lame excuse, if maintained, may be better than a good excused?" Dan's punishment was he wasn't allowed to work for a week. Mine was more of a normal punishment, I don't remember what. But Dan bitches about that punishment, probably still. I've never met someone less happy about not being able to go to work.