Big Cookies and Bigger Questions
How the axiom of futility doesn't care about your hustle
Okay, friends. A philosopher I am not. I don’t hold a single advanced degree in metaphysics. I barely got out of undergrad with an English degree and a not-passable GPA. But there’s a concept I’ve been chewing on lately, between bits of an oversized Crumble cookie and yet another doomscrolling session:
The Axiom of Futility.
The classical definition (the one that might show up on GRE flashcards) says it’s futile to attempt what’s logically or practically impossible.
Sure, I guess.
I put it in my own words:
Just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean I can afford the cost of trying.
We’re not talking about a crisis of imagination here. More of a crisis of capacity.
Confused? Let’s try to paint a picture or two from my very ordinary life.
📱 The brain-rot loop
We’ve all done it.
“Five more minutes,” we tell ourselves, and flick our thumb. The Instagram feed scrolls up. We’re looking for just one more funny clip or one more gotcha video.
Suddenly, it’s two hours later.
Algorithm: 1, Lauren: 0.
This week, I put myself in social media timeout. I needed to step away from the endless toxicity.
Can I turn my attention now back to the things I claim to value?
Attention
Stillness
Depth
🧠 The control complex
In 2020, I broke down (with a million others!). Quietly. While still managing all of the “normal” things. I opened a BetterHelp account using one of many podcast codes, because, obviously, I was still me.
My therapist helped me work through an exhausting tendency: if the world was breaking down, surely it was my job to keep it together. For everyone.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
She offered insight. I found frameworks to tie into those on my own, like the “dichotomy of control” (thanks, Stoics).
I began to sort life into two buckets:
What’s mine to carry.
What isn’t.
I learned that fixing everything isn’t nobility. It’s avoidance dressed up in control issues.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
William Butler Yeats
💰 ELI5: The five gold coins
Let’s pretend we’re back in 2020 again, and my cute daughter is five years old. With her sweet smile and long eyelashes, she busted out multi-syllabic words correctly and casually. Not precocious, just the child of two word nerds. (Sorry, kids!)
If I were explaining the axiom of futility to her, it might go like this:
“Hey, babe. Let’s pretend you have gold coins.”
She grins big and her eyes grow.
“You get five gold coins every single day.”
She likes this idea.
“Every time you color...”
She gets lost in coloring.
“... read...”
Another favorite activity.
“... or go to school,”
Ooo, friends.
“... you get to spend one.”
She attempts to do some mental math.
“But, if you try to do all those things at the same time, your coins run out, and you don’t have any left to play soccer with your brother later.”
She squints one eye, trying to decide if this matters. Today, she decides it would be a sad thing.
“So it’s about resource optimization, Mommy?”
And we laugh together.
🙏 Serenity for the overcommitted
In 2020, I stood outside in the sunshine talking to an older neighbor (an actual event that happened, not an imagined conversation with my daughter like I typed out above). She picked up on my anxiety about some upcoming events, and she quoted out part of the Serenity Prayer to me.
The Serenity Prayer isn’t just something stitched on throw pillows. It’s tactical advice for the soul:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
That last line is the real kicker: wisdom to know the difference. Listen, folks. Futility isn’t always obvious. It disguises itself as noble effort, perfectionism, or “trying to be a good person.”
It’s learning to respond, rather than react. My kids and I have a little mantra: “No BCD — no blame, complain, or defend.” (It’s from Tim Kight, but I’ll take the mom points.)
Every ounce of energy spent on things I can’t control is a coin I don’t get back.
💔 The loyalty abyss
This brings me to what’s been weighing on me lately: the erosion of loyalty in a fragmented world.
You can’t demand loyalty. It’s grown in the soil of consistent, chosen connection.
How do we grow anything when we’re pulled in 100 directions?
I used to see my soccer friends weekly. When that season of my life set, I lost that connection. I had a neighbor I walked with regularly. Now we have texts with long gaps between.
And let’s not start on the illusion of “connection” through apps and hearts and emojis.
Online loyalty is real… until it isn’t. Until the algorithm buries your post. Until your comment thread goes dead. Until everyone’s just tired.
In a world where attention is currency, loyalty becomes a luxury.
🍪 So what does a giant cookie have to do with it?
The axiom of futility isn’t a doom-and-gloom principle. It’s a calibration tool. It reminds me that I have five gold coins a day, and not one more. It reminds me that trying to hold the whole internet, the whole political system, the whole heartbreak of the world in my own two hands is not only unwise, it’s unlivable.
Futility isn’t failure. Maybe it’s the invitation to spend your five gold coins wisely.
I would spend them on the friend who meets us at the camping site four hours away. On my kid’s laughter. On the bonk of a kitty who missed us and the doggy who shakes her entire body with welcome-home excitement. On the memory of the neighbor who brought me Wunderbars back from Canada. On the kid on the soccer team who tells me the story of canoeing with his youth group.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
Henry David Thoreau
🤖 The ethical technologist’s final note
Maybe the axiom of futility isn’t a law of failure. Maybe it’s an invitation to spend your five gold coins wisely. And to know when one small, loyal act is worth more than all the likes in the world.
Technology wants us to believe we’re limitless. That everything is possible with the right hack, the right app, or the right push notification.
But real life pushes back because AI can’t create meaning, automation doesn’t equal loyalty, and there’s no shortcut through futility.
So this week, I’m attempting to slow down, unplug, and choose my coins with care.
Because I’m human.
That doesn’t make me futile. Just finite.