Open loops are a recipe for frustration. But it's worse to gloss over them. That compounds the issue.
I pass over a graveyard. If I had to guess I would say the overwhelming majority of bones beneath the stones had unfinished business and open loops. It's a gift to close your unfinished business before dying.
Yom Kippur is the Jewish response to solving this issue. It's so important that it takes metaphysical threats and metaphors to solve it. But it works. We need to build in time to clear the clutter.
How do we select which item to pop to the queue top? Urgency? Risk? I think emotional valence is a good heuristic. If you're going to feel bad or have ongoing issues about not fixing that issue it will gnaw at you. It's better to address it. Now.
There are relationship open loops. These range from common misunderstanding, immaturity of our former selves, miscommunication, or perhaps just philosophical differences.
There's also opportunity cost issues. These are called regret. There are also the relationships that never were. This seems common. Make peace with it. Think of yourself as caught in time - a rushing river. You cannot get to the spot upstream. Instead you should understand the error and course-correct so your next opportunity in that space is not missed!
Emotional responses are also open loops. Are we triggered by certain people? I think of this as two containers in space. If the barrier is permeable then people can trigger us. It's worth considering if the attack vector can be removed (e.g., this person is full of drama that I don't need). But often the best approach is to figure out how to shore up that junction so that you're safe from similar future attacks. There's only so much we can do to control our environment.
I heard a nice way of dealing with this and it starts with the “sacred pause”. I like that. It suggests that we rise above the blizzard of our emotions and see it as an event rather than a fundamental part of our identity: Oh, that’s my physiology reacting again.
What are we to do if a relationship is partially done? What if it’s over, but things are left partially done. Some call that a lack of closure. Closure is the right way to think about it. That gap causes us suffering.
Which brings me to my 13 year old self, staring at the yellow/green glowing stars on my ceiling (Saturn, not that it matters). While staring I had a wonderful thought: why should I care what anyone thinks of me. I was specifically thinking about my grandfather who had just died. He was larger than life and I always wondered what he thought of me. I didn’t feel like I made the impression I might have back then. Perhaps I’m still trying to impress him? At any rate the ameliorating thought was that it didn’t matter. Because he was an android. Strange I know. But I figured that it was impossible to know what was in his head. So it didn’t matter if this was really true - to me he was an android. For that matter, so was everyone. And I was the only human on earth. That let me isolate his feelings as irrelevant. This construct was useful. Thus, all that mattered was my own judgments of others, not those of anyone else. I had social anxiety and shyness and this was the perfect tool. This wasn't a perfect tool but it was better than nothing. I would go to the bathroom in the library so people wouldn’t see my face, covered in pimples. It was awful. I had a major complex.
I need to feel for that kid. I’m thinking of him now and I’m loving him. I think he had a lot of potential and amazing qualities. Those qualities, many of them, never did express fully. That boy was too shy and reserved and self-conscious to perform incredibly well at that time, to squash his competitors. The only thing I was able to do was push myself. That’s because I didn’t feel empowered to push anyone else. So I pointed all that energy inward. So I got better. But I still had a complex about so many things. For example even the little things: we were not Orthodox Jews but I still went to a school that was. We would park around the block because it wasn’t allowed to drive. So we had to hide our identities, in a way. This did not contribute to any sort of feelings of pride. Shame.
Also, the pecking order and hierarchies of high school got ingrained. They constitute another kind of open loop, the hierarchical open loop. Deferring to people who have more power.
There’s the dreams open loop. This is where regret comes from. Wherein the lever of life and responsibility wedges under the lightness of the dream, inserting mechanical force to get under it. Over time, for some, the dusty accumulation of regret gives those dreams more weight. They then press on that lever and cause pressure. Some withdraw the wedge and the dreams crash down. Others are skillful at prying the wedge open further, allowing the dreams to insert into the container of daily activity. That’s probably the better way.
There are physiological open loops. Consider pushing your body to failure. Well, you actually train failure if you do that. It might be better to train to success <how do others do it?>. The Golgi tendon organ retains memory of failure. It needs to train to success.
Was there ever a time I felt proud? Hmm. Yes there was one. In football I got the alternative MVP (most versatile player) because I played the most positions. It was with no exaggeration probably the only time I was awarded anything in public at school. But my dad decided we should leave that team dinner early that night. For no real reason either. So I missed the speech my coach gave about me. I still wonder what that might have done for my confidence. Someone placed the certificate in my cubby the next day. I felt like that was my one chance. It was like a tree falling in the forest - did that actually happen?
So how does one close these loops? The first step is identification. Meditating on where psychological friction lives is a good place. So that’s what I’m doing. Intuiting deeply so that I can be a good gardener and rip out the weeds.