Sadness, Disappointment, and Math-based Mood Enhancers…

• The high school crush whose approval gave you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside, and ensured the planets continued orbiting around the Sun.
• The cool kids in your freshman dorm whom you gleefully hoped to eat with at the dining hall each evening.
• The ‘dream’ job/college/club/date/exam grade you desperately wanted, but instead received a combination of: “We regret to inform…”, “Thank you for considering…”, “Despite the excellent credentials…”, “We’re just not a good fit…”, etc.
• Your unfulfilled fantasy of seeing your name marked out for promotion in the annual company reorg email…
• A failed romantic relationship/friendship/familial relationship that haunts you every time you go to bed…

The list goes on…

Everyone has them. Those singular moments in life, when time stops, and everything ceases to matter except that one thing. Only to be followed by the searing pain of rejection & disappointment.

As an analytic-in-training, I’ve concocted some math-based mood enhancers that will hopefully make you feel better. Let’s begin with some definitions:

i promise this is the only math definition

• “Event Value (t)” simply means how valuable a given event in the past (job rejection, exam failure, etc.) is to you at some point in your life.
• What I call the “Original Event Value” is just how important that event felt to you when it first happened.
• And finally “alpha” represents how fast a given event loses importance to you as time passes.
• Important Note: Looking for the values of these variables? You’ll find them in your heart. ❤

the resemblances to high school calculus are eerie!

The punchline: as time passes, events that once meant the world to you, start losing value. Some at faster rates, others at slower rates. In the end, it doesn’t matter at all.

Here are some graphs (to really kick in those sordid memories of high school algebra):

alpha = 1 (maybe a ‘dream’ college rejection letter or passed over promotion at work?)

alpha = 2 (a romantic interest you particularly fancied, but got turned down?)

alpha = 5 (definitely something trivial like a guy who taking a parking spot you were eyeing)

What all these squiggly red lines on graph paper show is that no matter how crushing a particularly nasty event felt to you at the time, in the end, it couldn’t matter less.

Want some proof? Think back to all the rejection letters you received when you applied to college. The party you didn’t get invited to. Do these things still leave a gaping hole in your heart? Most likely not. And that is the ultimate wisdom: whenever you feel down or maybe just unhappy about something, try to remember these magic equations. You’ll start seeing things through the lens of time, and my hope is that you’ll be better in no time.

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A plot twist: think back to a particularly happy memory from your past. It probably still feels like yesterday! The Law of Decaying Value applies only to negative events, and that’s what makes life so beautiful. ;)