A good life is a balance of different kinds of thinking. We have our preferences for thinking style and content, and mine tend to vary between technical and behavioral, where often I am experiencing a gradient of both but leaning stronger in one direction. I have been leaning technical for over a month now – starting with the HPSF Conference in Chicago, and returning and becoming completely immersed in not one, but two paper that led to simulation experiments for which (ultimately) I ran over 20K simulations for agentic job negotiation and selection paired with resource provider discovery software, a hierarchical server architecture to orchestrate the work, and algorithms and method to test it all out. It was an exciting, and full set of weeks! However, today I would like to talk about the other side of my dimension. I want to talk about observation, acceptance, and learning. Let’s dive in.
Going off a Cliff
You have a dream where you are in a car, and in a forested and quiet area in the night. It’s a beautiful car, but it does not behave as expected when you push the accelerator. It goes backwards and then forwards at high speed. You find yourself going off the road, through the trees, and plummet off of a cliff. There is a moment of weightlessness and time in a standstill. How do you a feel?
A younger (or real-world) version of you would be terrified. This is the point in the nightmare when you wake up, and are a mix of relieved and upset. Today, you are overtaken with calm. You still wake up, but you are are not fearful or experiencing a negative emotion. You are curious. Why?
Acceptance Before Experience
The calm results from adopting acceptance before experience. It has resulted from years of meta-cognition to understand yourself and the world. Let me explain. When we are younger, we are reactive. We experience the world, ruminate, and either react or choose to suppress. A child will likely react in the most behaviorally logical way. When you touch a hot stove and it hurts, you cry out. A young adult might learn the social fabric wrapped around their reactions, and learn to suppress. They touch the stove, understand that it is “weak” to show pain, and hide it. Many of us do not progress from either of these states to react or suppress. If you watch the famous scene from American Chopper (the one that resulted in the meme, yes) you will notice the second, younger man, go from a state of expressionless shock into immediate reactive anger. We know well from the meme that it turns into a yelling match and he storms out. He reacted. What are alternative endings for this interaction?
He might have suppressed. He might have decided to internalize his anger, like a packet of negative energy forced into a tiny pocket and shoved deep inside his chest. This is a strategy that works in the short term because it allows you to handle a hard situation. Often quick, emotional reactions can be unpacked later, and then discussed when emotions have cooled down. The problem is when we never unpack. We continue filling up our internal pockets until every crevice is stuffed. And then the (typically) negative and unprocessed emotions explode out. Exploding pockets are collections of so many life experiences they no longer have specific direction, only valence. We direct the energy inwards to ourselves, and onto others. It is the reason that someone might seem to unexpectedly explode, and the magnitude of the reaction often does not make sense.
The Alternative of Observation
The other alternative is to observe. Observation is based on a pattern of experiencing the world, ruminating, understanding thoughts and behavior, and then making a decision. The nuances of the decision are what set people apart. You might decide on a strategy of control. How do I control my environment so this does not happen again? Does it mean avoidance? Does it mean setting a boundary? As a young woman I practiced this a lot. My negative emotion of choice was anxiety, and primarily oriented to social. A bad social experience could simply be nullified by avoiding people. If I had a bad experience traveling, I could stay at home. I can understand how agoraphobia develops. What happens with this mindset is that we inadvertently create boundaries to protect ourselves. It’s a false sense of protection. It’s a self-inflicted cage. The safety measures we impose prevent us from living fully, from being authentic and vulnerable with others, and connecting meaningfully. Our life experience gets smaller. That is, of course, what happens when you live in a box.
There is no Control
The insight is that it is not possible to have control. Events occur with different valences and probabilities of happening again, many of which are outside of our awareness. Logic can help here too, and we can identify our own inconsistencies. Look up the probability of dying in a plane versus a car crash, and then think about the prevalence of being afraid of driving versus flying. It is not logical. We have a false sense of control while driving because our hand happens to be on the wheel. We cannot control events, nor can we inflict control on the thinking of behavior of others.
Let’s start again with the sequence. We are hit with life experiences, we ruminate, and possibly get stuck in our heads. We do not choose reaction, suppression, or avoidance. For each new experience, we start to recognize patterns. It might be that we are defensive for a particular topic. Is it because we have an insecurity about it? Where does that insecurity stem from? Is the foundational belief that underlies it true? We unwrap our (typically) unconscious thinking to form understanding, and find that we react less. The experiences feel less directed at as, and more like streams flowing by us. Our default state is one of curiosity. We are not suppressing. We are understanding. The world is no longer dangerous, but interesting. We start to notice more, process, and learn about ourselves, our needs, and create hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms of what we observe. We become better at applying similar logic to others. We notice more, to the point we are no longer resorting to impulsive reaction. We stop trying to control. This is meta-cognition – the ability to step outside of ourselves, observe, and critique our thoughts.
The epiphany that many of us might have as young, ruminating adults is that there is no control. However, there is wisdom in the Serenity Prayer. Lack of control does not extinguish lack of choice. The degree to which something affects us is a choice. We can choose to stop reacting and trying to control our environment, and just observe it. Observing becomes the primary state of being, and we accept things before we have experienced them. Their existence or outcome is separate from a sense of self. The events that happen around us do not define us. The car goes off the cliff, and we observe the experience. We have accepted it before it happened.
Unintentional Impact
Marcus Aurelius talks about the soul being dyed the color of our thoughts in his personal writings. I read this, and I loved the metaphor. The practice of observing our experiences and changing our perspective can color the mind a more beautiful hue. It builds on itself as we face the world with more joy, and it reflects back to us.
There are further benefits. The first is appreciation. We often do not actively see the things that are right in front of us. We forgot that we are wearing a watch or bracelet because it is biologically more efficient. Or perhaps we do not appreciate what is on our wrist because we are perceiving a future better model. We do not realize the value until our wrist is bare. We notice absence of a previously fulfilled need more strongly than its presence. And that is the basis of nostalgia – a realization of appreciation that only is possible when the object or person is no longer present to appreciate. This is the benefit of observation. It reveals the details. We move from a mindset of wanting what we don’t have to realizing what we have is exactly what we want.
To go back to American Chopper, the alternate ending to that scene is that he observes, he listens, says OK and stands up and walks out. He understands his own needs and what is happening in the environment, accepts it, and decides it is time to walk away.
Closing
It is an admirable goal to practice being an observer. The choice of how to react (control, suppress, or observe) is the first level of a hierarchy that we choose from. The degree to which we are able to, in real time, observe and change our thoughts is meta-cognition. When our perception is not anchored in fear, we can live more fully.
Suggested Citation:
Sochat, Vanessa. "Observation." @vsoch (blog), 10 Apr 2026, https://vsoch.github.io/2026/observation/ (accessed 11 Apr 26).