Reflection 79 – The Ease of “Presence” and the Difficulty of “Absence”

What do these numbers have in common: 842, 134, 408, 624, 249, 041? Don’t move on before thinking of an answer. Now, what do these numbers have in common: 874, 253, 397, 423, 501, 759? I will give you the answer but at the end. No, don’t scroll down to check the answers . Wait till I tell you this first.
Let’s imagine any given day for you at work. You wake up in the morning after a good sleep. You walk to the bathroom and have a refreshing shower. Then, you put on your clothes and eat a delicious breakfast. And, off to work! You spend your day at work in meetings and calls discussing different work-related issues. Towards the end of the day, you take your car and drive safely home. Now, let’s imagine another (extreme) day.
You wake up with a terrible stomachache. Shortly thereafter, you get shivers and your temperature skyrockets. You can’t walk to the bathroom on your own, and someone must help you. Food tastes horrible and you don’t feel like eating at all. You even can’t pick up the phone to apologize for not going to work. You then spend the rest of the day sleeping and in the bathroom. Not fun at all! Your condition remains like this for a couple of days until you eventually get better.
Probably all of us have experienced something similar one way or another. You got to agree with me that in the second example it’s very easy to see the “presence” of pain. This is seen in your stomachache, fever, not being able to get out of bed, etc. In general, we human beings are very good at identifying the presence of different phenomena; in this case pain. However, we are terrible in the opposite scenario; i.e. the “absence” of stuff. In other words, we are blind to non-events or events that do not exist! So, in our first example, we don‘t see that we woke up with “no pain”. We don‘t see that there was no “inability” to walk. We don‘t see that we drove safely and didn‘t “crash” on the road. I believe part of it is that we are partially wired to think so, but also, we are very used to living a rather luxurious material life. If you don‘t believe me, check out the billions of people who live on a dollar a day or those who must walk for several kilometers daily (usually women and kids) to fetch drinkable water for their families. It’s not normal for our brains to think in a way of “what if” scenarios. But we need to force ourselves to do so. So, when you wake up with no pain, try to imagine your day “if” you woke up with pain. When you have a nice breakfast, imagine how you would be if you remained hungry. And so on!
In case you are wondering what does all of this have to do with the numbers I mentioned in the beginning? Well, the first one contains the digit four in each number. Therefore, it might be relatively easier to detect than the other one. In other words, the digit four is “present”. The second number series contains numbers that all lack the digit six! So, yes, in some respect it’s easier for us to detect the “presence” of things than the “lack” thereof. In case you weren‘t able to solve any of them; then, don‘t worry! I didn‘t and assume most people can’t .
PS: The idea behind this reflection and the numbers example come from the book The Art Of Thinking Clearly.