For at least six years, from early 2006 to early 2012 I “suffered” from what medical practitioners term as “anxiety”. It was “co-morbid” with my depression, and I think it was there from much before 2006. I would frequently think about random events, and and wonder what would happen if things happened in a certain way. I would think of “negative black swan” events, events with low probability but which would have a significant negative impact on my life.
While considering various possibilities and preparing for them is a good thing, the way I handled them were anything but good. Somewhere in my system was wired the thought that simply worrying about an event would prevent it from happening. I once got fired from one job. Every day during my next two jobs, I would worry if I would get fired. If I got an uncharitable email from my boss, I would worry if he would fire me. If my blackberry failed to sync one morning I would worry that it was because I had already been fired. Needless to say, I got fired from both these jobs also, for varying reasons.
I used to be a risk-taker. And it so happened that for a prolonged period in my life, a lot of risks paid off. And then for another rather prolonged period, none of them did (Mandelbrot beautifully calls this phenomenon the Joseph effect). The initial period of successful risk-taking probably led me to take more risk than was prudent. The latter period of failure led me to cut down on risks to an unsustainable level. I would be paranoid about any risks I had left myself exposed to. This however doesn’t mean that the risks didn’t materialize.
It was in January of last year that I started medication for my anxiety and depression. For a few days there was no effect. Then, suddenly I seemed to hit a point of inflexion and my anxious days were far behind. While I do credit Venlafaxine Hexachloride I think one event in this period did more than anything else to get me out of my anxiety.
I was riding my Royal Enfield Classic 500 across the country roads of Rajasthan, as part of the Royal Enfield Tour of Rajasthan. The first five days of the tour had gone rather well. Riding across the rather well-made Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) roads set across beautiful landscapes had already helped clear out my mind a fair bit. It gave me the time and space to think without getting distracted. I would make up stories as I rode, and at the end of each day I would write a 500 word essay in my diary. All the riding gear meant that the wind never really got into my hair or my face, but the experience was stunning nevertheless. For a long time in life, I wanted to “be accelerated”. Ride at well-at-a-faster-rate, pulling no stops. And so I rode. On the way to Jaisalmer on a rather empty highway, I even hit 120 kmph, which I had never imagined I would hit on my bike. And I rode fearlessly, the acceleration meaning that my mind didn’t have much space for negative thoughts. Things were already so much better. Until I hit a cow.
Sometimes I rationalize saying I hadn’t consumed my daily quota of Venlafaxine Hexachloride that morning. Sometimes I rationalize that I was doing three things at the same time – one more than the number of activities I can normally successfully carry out simultaneously. There are times when I replay the scene in my head and wonder how things would have been had I done things differently. And I sometimes wonder why the first time I ever suffered a fracture had to happen in the middle of nowhere far off from home.
It had been a wonderful morning. We had left the camp at Sam early, stopping for fuel at Jaisalmer, and then at this wonderful dhaba at Devikot, where we had the most awesome samosa-bajjis (massive chilis were first coated with a layer of potato curry – the one they put in samosa – and then in batter and deep fried). For the first time that day I had the camera out of its bag, hanging around my neck. I would frequently stop to take photos, of black camels and fields and flowers and patterns in the cloud. The last photo I took was of Manjunath (from my tour group) riding past a herd of black camels.
I function best when I do two things at a time. That morning I got over confident and did three. I was riding on a road 10 feet wide at 80 kilometres per hour. I was singing – though I’ve forgotten what I was singing. And I was thinking about something. My processor went nuts. While things were steady state on the road there was no problem. There was a problem, however, when I saw a bit too late that there was a massive herd of massive cows blocking my path further down the road.
There was no time to brake. I instead decided to overtake the herd by moving to the right extreme of the road (the cows were all walking on the road in the same direction as me). To my misfortune, one of the cows decided to move right at the same time, and I hit her flush in the backside. The next thing I remember is of me lying sprawled on the side of the road about five metres from where my bike was fallen. There was no sign of the cow. The bike was oozing petrol but I wasn’t able to get up to lift it up – presently others in my tour group who were a few hundred metres behind reached the scene and picked up my bike. And I don’t know what state of mind I was in but my first thought after I picked myself up was to check on my camera!
The camera wasn’t alright – it required significant repairs after I got back home, but I was! I had broken my fifth metacarpal, which I later realized was a consequence of the impact of the bike hitting the cow. There were some gashes on my bicep where the protective padding of my riding jacket had pressed against my skin. I still have a problem with a ligament in my left thumb, again a consequence of the impact. And that was it.
I had had an accident while traveling at 80 kmph. I had fallen a few metres away from the point of impact (I don’t know if I did a somersault while I fell, though). I fell flush on my shoulder with my head hitting the ground shortly. It was a rather hard fall on the side of the road where the ground was uneven. And there was absolutely no injury because of the fall (all the injury was due to impact)!
It was the protection. No amount of worry would have prevented that accident. Perhaps I was a bit more careless than I should have been but that is no reason for there not being an accident. When you are riding on a two wheeler at a reasonable pace on country roads, irrespective of how careful you are there is always a chance that you may fall. The probability of a fall can never go to zero.
What I had done instead was to protect myself from the consequences of the fall. Each and every piece of protective equipment I wore that day took some impact – helmet, riding jacket, riding gloves, knee guard, shoes.. Without any one of these pieces, there is a chance I might have ended up with serious injury. There was a cost I paid – both monetary and by means of discomfort caused by wearing such heavy gear – but it had paid off.
Black swans exist. However, worrying about them will not ease them. Those events cannot be prevented. What you need to do, however, is to hedge against the consequences of those events. There was always a finite possibility that I would fall. All I did was to protect myself against the consequences of that!
Despite contrary advice from the doctor, I decided to ride on and finish the tour, struggling to wear my riding glove over my swollen right hand – stopping midway would have had a significant adverse impact on my mental state which had just begun to improve. I’ve stopped worrying after that. Yes, there are times when I see a chance of some negative black swan event happening. I don’t worry about that any more, though. I only think of how I can hedge against its consequences.
