Emergency Measures in Ordinary Times
Conrad Ho (Hongkong, China)
July 05, 2011
After dinner in the night on 18 June 2011, I switched on my TV electronic games set, the type that would detect your movements for control. The game of Japanese-style gladiators was picked. I played against the computer. In the screen, both players were holding Japanese wooden swords and fighting on a raised platform out in the sea. Previously, when I played this game, only one strategy was available to me, i.e reflexively swinging the remote control of movement detector as fast as I could to attack, and hoped that would work to beat the opponent. Whether which swing did beat him and how, well, I would not know. Though I was staring at the screen, seeing the two cartoon figures representing myself and the opponent fighting each other, I could not really understand what was going on, not even discerning the movements on both sides. All I could see were quick movements in blurry forms. It’s just too stimulating, and my mind too busy to cope!
But my experiencing this night was totally different. After pressing on the “start” button, I somehow found myself calmly watching the opponent approaching on the screen, understanding the implications behind his moves. I drew the first blood by attacking before he could raise his sword to defend or assault. And I did not blindly swing my sword wildly. Instead, after the opponent bent over or sideways because of my attack, I knew to swing my sword in a different angle to reach for his waist or leg. When the opponent finally found his breath and raised his sword in defense, I could see that on the screen and made appropriate changes to find other loopholes on other areas of his body. When I was occasionally beaten, when I bent over or sideways, I could understand that on the screen when the sky was shown and no opponent was in sight. All these were no reflexive movements any more, but intended movements after conscious thinking.
The result? I enjoyed the state so much! I could feel myself swinging the sword at will and in leisure, and the opponent got beaten to the sea. So relaxed, so energy-saving, so happy!
It was after dinner on June 19. I was so tempted that I played the gladiator game again. My performance was very good last night, so I gathered quite some points. This night, due to that, my opponents were also much stronger. In the first few fights, I could still gain the upper hand, fighting leisurely and consciously. Afterwards, I lost every now and then. This got my nerves. I could feel my heart beating faster, my hands gripping the remote control tighter and even my muscles on my shoulders became tenser. When I passed the amateur level into the professional grade, I got beaten more and more, and my anxiety level shot up. Eventually, during a match where I was driven to the rim of the platform and close to defeat, my visual field suddenly narrowed, from seeing more than the TV screen down to just the sword of the opponent. At the same time, my hand automatically swinging wildly and reflexively. I could no longer understand what was going on on the screen. I could think of strategy nor moves no more, just swing the sword as fast as I could, and only up and down and no other directions. Whether I could get at the opponent by doing so, I could not consciously care less.
This worked. I managed to win this match and the next, at a huge cost. Under such stress in a period of only 7-8 minutes, my forearm muscles became very tired, close to having a spasm. Even the upper arms and shoulders were too tired to be raised to do anything. The head was felt to be too small for the brain and it was dizzy. After switching off the game and turning to a TV programme, I was still just staring straight into the screen. So, I got into bed instead.
Only when I was back in the office on June 20 could I reflect on the experiences in those two nights. I suddenly realized that it was a classic case of the effects of stress on performance. I experienced the relaxation and efficiency of working in a relaxed state as well as the effort and results of working in a stressed state during a perceived emergency.
I reckoned that it had to be the so-called “positive stress”. With stress, better results were squeezed out. Like what I had done in the game. During “emergency” (my being close to defeat), without conscious decision, I turned from the relaxed state into the stressed state. By doing so, I could defeat the opponent and rose to the next level. This was the better result, at the cost of a lowered efficiency. This was expressed in my game as tired muscles, dizziness and staring eyes. When I was relaxed, I would not be that tired after playing the same number of gladiator games.
In the real world, when there is actual danger, emergency, crisis or threat right in front of you, tired muscles, dizziness and staring eyes are no problem. Relative to life, bodily harm or lost properties, this may be a low cost to pay. And such cost every now and then is also affordable. What is important is that people do not use emergency measures (performance in stress) in ordinary times, trading long-term lost efficiency for short-term better results. The costs of stress is cumulative. Every time you has paid such a cost, the price will be raised automatically, in the forms of increasingly tired body and mind, accumulating fragility in health and mounting explosiveness of emotions. Eventually, all these may transform into diseases!
