Somewhat Less Irritable

I think I just found my new favorite answer to this question:

Why meditate?

My previous go-to answer was:

To reduce unhappiness.

My new answer is:

To become somewhat less irritable.

I just saw that phrase in an article by Adam Gopnick. He was writing about Robert Wright’s new book. Gopnik wrote:

What Wright is doing seems an honorable, even a sublime, achievement. Basically, he says that meditation has made him somewhat less irritable.

I like my new answer better because “unhappiness” is vague, compared to “less irritable.” On the downside, the new answer is less complete, but then, that is offset by being more precise, and somewhat funny.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting − when you do that math.

What happens if you become somewhat less irritable every day for ten years?

I showed that question to my brother Paul the math monster, and he predictably provided a formula:

I = Irritability
s = The day you start meditating
d = The number of days you meditate
p = Your percentage of decrease in irritability per day

I(s+d) = I(s) x (1-p) ^ d

(^ means exponent, as in: to the power of)

As with playing poker, there’s some guesswork to be done here, namely, the value of p. I’m going to pull a number out of my cortex that is intended to be low enough to be plausible, but not so low as to be ineffective.

We will set the value of p at 1/000. (Also known as .001)

And now we get to plug our values into Paul’s formula and see what comes out…

If you start meditating everyday, and if meditation makes you 1/1000th less irritable per day, and you meditate for 3650 days, then…

I(s+3650) = I(s) x (.999) ^ 3650 = I(s) x 2.6%

In other words, after ten years, your irritability would be reduced to only 2.6% of whatever it is now. You’re stuck in traffic. You’re in the dentist chair. You’re being forced to listen to a babbling fool. In every situation, you would be about 1/45th as irritable.

Gopnick wrote: Meditation has made him somewhat less irritable.

And now we have mathematical proof that a whole lot of somewhats can add up to something.