Dangerous Impulses

You open up your laptop. You click on Internet Explorer (or maybe Firefox). You go to your homepage and then head on over to your email where you are expecting an important message.

Wait a minute.

You decided to go on over to Facebook instead to see who commented on your post.

You have fifteen comments.

Most are positive, but that one negative comment really grinds your gears. In a fit of rage, you type out an angry answer to the negative commenter.

You take a deep breath and calm down.

So now it's back over to the email.

Oh wait.

What about that cool old vinyl record you bid for on Ebay?

So you head on over to Ebay and check the status. A few minutes later, you find yourself shopping for another item on Ebay and then you look up to see an hour has now been used up without you ever having checked your email.

So you head back on over and open it up to find your very important message, but you're late in replying. You make a good reply and return to check on it later on but no luck. Your potential client is gone to someone else who acted more quickly.

Why did this happen?

Is it all the internet's fault?

Should you just get rid of Facebook and Ebay altogether?

Is the universe just not treating you fairly?

No.

Like most of our problems in life, this is an internal problem. The problem is that you acted on impulse. Instead of checking the email to get yourself a new client and move forward in your career and make money to pay your bills, you gave up a valuable hour to see a comment on Facebook which you could have easily postponed for later.

But there's good news.

You lost one client.

There will be others and hey. Are you going to be living in the street without that client? Nah. You'll make ends meet either way. So no big deal.

However impulses can drive us to do much worse and more costly things. I believe a lot of crime stems from impulsive behavior.

Does every robber think his plan through before striking?

Obviously not.

Does every murderer come up with the perfect way to get away with his crime before firing the gun?

Definitely not.

Yet, these crimes happen whether in what appears to be a smart manner or a stupid one. I think usually it is impulse.

Just as an impulse can steer you in the direction of buying a new pair of shoes when you need to use the money to pay your phone bill and when you decide to slum off studying to go grab a drink with friends, it can also make certain people snap and go outside the law.

I once read about a man who stabbed his wife of ten years in the head with an icepick for changing the channel on TV. Now I would hope this was an impulse kill. Apparently, stress had mounted up in this man for long enough and then one day the wife turns the channel from the game to a Lifetime movie and...

Just like that.

In many stories impulses play a big role. Stephen King's Misery, Annie Wilkes rescues Paul Sheldon from certain death in a car accident only to torture him to near madness . Yet when she rescued him initially I believe she had no real plans for him just right then. You could even say her impulsive behavior was a good thing for Paul since he did get to live. But more often than not, impulsive behavior leads to destruction like in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood where Perry's impulsive reaction spells the demise of the Clutter family.

In my book Jack Little, I believe Will Hodge has never done much of anything on impulse in his entire life. However, once he sees that van parked in the rundown motel, he sure starts to. He is one character who can no longer be trusted to do right by himself and his family. To put it simply, the man becomes full of impulses and every one of them is bad. When he goes to Home Depot to get the rake, did he really intend all along to go steal the pitcher from Tim? When he picks up Ted Mills on the side of the road, does he really have any good intentions other than taking the watch or was it an impulse?

I think it's fair to say that Will lost a good bit of his mind along with the business. And who can blame him? His initial impulse to see all his merchandise to a stranger was certainly a bad one. And his impulse to take back more than what was his was as well. Surely he takes a dark journey and just remember it all started with one impulse.

Watch your own impulses my friend and stay safe.