Checkmate, Almost!

Do you know the human brain loves unfinished business? 

I was surprised, too, when I noticed myself lingering a little longer while playing chess with my brother. He got a work call, and he had to leave in the middle. 

"Oh, wait. Let's finish this. I am about to win", I shouted. 

He left, just saying, "Later". 

"What a loser", my instant thought, and there I am, wondering if I had gotten just 3 more moves, he would have lost it already. Ugh, I am hating this half-played game. 

In life, too, we might come across such situations where we are just left in the middle of nowhere, and we might feel confused about what's next. Like, should we go back, continue moving ahead, or simply wait? That's the unfinished business I was talking about earlier. I know we humans absolutely hate it. But you know what, our brains love it. 

There was this famous study by Bluma Zeigarnik where she noticed in a cafe that waiters tend to remember unpaid orders well, but once the order is paid, the memory of the order fades quickly. This is called the "Zeigarnik effect". 

This means everything left in between will linger a little longer in our brain because it creates a psychological tension, and our brain will try to resolve it. That means when my brain said, if I had gotten just 3 more moves and the game was over, it was to reduce the tension of the ambiguity of who’s a real champion between us. I mean, we already know who is, but for his sake. 

Since we are talking about unfinished business, situationships nowadays need a special mention. Recently, a very dear friend called me about one of his situationships and asked for my advice on how to stop thinking about his abruptly ended situationship. I was a little aware of it, but not the whole story. So he began by describing this perfect girl he met and how they kept talking for hours for months without really naming where this is going. After a few months, he got to know that this was not exclusive. This stirred up some emotions in him. But how could he complain? They had both agreed to “see where things go.” Slowly, the conversations turned into arguments, and one day they simply stopped talking. Just like that, no closure, no explanation, no defined ending. 

This resulted in exactly what you'd expect, obsessing over what could have been. The brain never really got a chance to experience the real story. This led to a gap between "what could have happened and where we are at present." Our human brain tries to fill the gap by giving us an endless number of possibilities that could have happened. And in no time, we find ourselves looping over the same situation. 

Now, you would be expecting me to tell you the solution to come out of this loop. Well, I am no expert, but another victim of this unfinished business. I can tell you what I usually do in these situations: I acknowledge the emotions that I feel while looping, cry about it, vent about it to my best friend and therapist, and when my emotions settle a little, I try to close the gap with a rational "what could actually have been if". Afterall, closure doesn’t come from the other person or the situation. Maybe it’s something we create. The hardest part? Accepting both can coexist. Your emotions with that person & the ending.