Acquiescence

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized." - Red (Morgan Freeman), The Shawshank Redemption(Side note: I like emdashes. Too bad if they have a bad rap these days.)The DiagnosisSome time back, I wrote about "The Path" and that things can just happen in life or work that lead you to a place, even though you may not be able to see the destination.It's important to remember while the past is fixed, the future isn't.The problem with looking back is that the past offers a sense of certainty. This worked. That didn't. There's a status quo bias at work here — a tendency to prefer things stay the way they are, simply because that's the way they already are. That's different from functional fixedness, where you can't see an alternative.What I'm talking about is that even if there is a better option, it simply does not matter. Most folks just can't let go of the past.Taken to its logical end,…