Verified by 
Some people wonder what life is all about. I’ll tell you. Life is all about making things happen the way we want.
It’s about making our fingernails look the way we want, and finding the life partner we want, and being the weight we want, and making sure our coffee is served the way we want in the timeframe we want, and looking after the planet the way we want to, and watching the movies we want, eating the meals we want, and being the sort of person we want to be.
The reason that we have to make things happen the way we want is because there are other forces affecting the happenings of the things around us. The wind blows, the sun rises and sets, the traffic jams, the grass grows, the rain falls, the barista mixes up the coffee order, and the stores open and close. Generally, though, we don’t want the things that are important to us to be dished up in any old state – we want them to be in particular states. We want to make sure we avoid the traffic jams, that we get to the store when it’s still open, that we have a double-shot rather than a single-shot on full cream rather than soy milk.
We’re designed to correct things when they are different from how we want them to be. This difference doesn’t mean bad, it just means different. We pay attention to the times when there is a gap between what we want or expect and what we actually get.
And because it’s a gap, it has two sides. Every gap is bounded by the goal, desire, or expectation in the head of an individual on one side and the environmental conditions on the other side. If the state of the environment is very different from what is expected there will be a large gap, if it’s similar, the gap will be much smaller.
It’s important to keep the two sides of the gap in mind when steps to reduce the gap are taken. The gap can be closed by either changing the environment to be more like the expectation or changing the expectation to be more like the environment.
My family and I recently had an extremely pleasant vacation in a seaside town. Quite unpredictably, it transpired that we needed to take our son to visit a medical doctor. We found a health centre and made an appointment. The appointment time was 11:45am. We were asked to arrive early so that we could complete the necessary forms. At 11:39am the doctor came into the waiting area and called us in for our appointment. I was surprised to have been called in early. What was even more astounding, however, was that we were back at the reception desk at 11:44am with a very satisfactory outcome. I don’t think I’ve ever visited a doctor and been in and out of the consultation before the scheduled appointment time.
This was a very definite gap between what I expected to happen (being called in to the consultation at some unspecified time past the scheduled appointment time) and what actually did happen (starting and finishing the consultation before the scheduled time). It wasn’t an unpleasant gap but it was a gap nevertheless and, since we are designed to correct any gap, something had to be done.
Of course, I could have reduced the gap at the time by saying to the doctor when we were called in “Actually, it’s only 11:39am and our appointment isn’t until 11:45am. We’ll come in to see you then.” As I mentioned before, we didn’t take that course of action but the gap was closed nevertheless.
A couple of days later I had an unpleasant encounter with a stingray and it was my turn to visit the doctor. My appointment was scheduled for 1:20pm and, as I was sitting in the reception area waiting to be called, I realised that my expectation about when I would be called in to see the doctor had changed. I found that I had started watching the clock and at about 1:15pm I realised I was thinking “It’ll be any minute now.” Well, 1:20pm came and went and I was eventually called in at 1:29pm. Not a dreadfully long wait but still not what I had come to expect.
Afterwards, I reflected on how quickly, invisibly, and seamlessly, my expectation had changed. I didn’t “try” to change it, I didn’t do any homework activities to practice thinking differently about doctor’s appointments, and I didn’t dispute any beliefs to arrive at a different perspective about how punctual doctors were with their appointments. In fact, I didn’t even realise that my expectation had changed until I returned to the doctor’s for my appointment.
While there is a voluminous literature on helping people change all sorts of behaviours in all sorts of ways, we often fail to recognise that change is actually a very routine part of our existence. Sometimes it might be more beneficial to consider why natural change has stopped happening the way it usually occurs, rather than trying to find artificial ways of forcing change to happen.
Our life is a ceaseless cacophony of shrinking and expanding gaps which we somehow manage to smoothly and efficiently monitor and attend to as required. Gaps are not good or bad, they’re just gaps. Sometimes the gap-management process that is our life involves changing the environment, and sometimes it is our goals that are changed. The more we understand about the gaps that are foundational to our existence, the better placed we will be to keep the gaps smaller for longer periods of time and to know greater contentment and satisfaction.
