Avoidance/Motivation and (Re)Connecting with the Things That Make Us, “Us”
When I began writing this blog last month, I was staring at a ton of tabs open with jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Idealist but found little motivation to actually apply to anything. So, I stopped job hunting and saw my Medium bookmark and thought, “I need to just put some words down. And I need to do this more.”
I opened the tab after re-reading this Instagram post where I set a goal of writing more this year; at least once a month, in fact. Yet, here I am twelve months later without much more than a handful of finished poems and a few hundred words of incomplete ones, several random fragments of ideas, and a growing list of words overshadowed by a catalog of days where distraction and procrastination took the reins. At times, distraction can be a form of self-care that demonstrates self-awareness. But where is the line between distraction as self-care and distraction as avoidance? I guess it comes down to being honest with yourself, which can be an uncomfortable practice — one I regularly find myself avoiding.
If this year’s been anything, it’s an exercise in accepting that life is lived in seasons, some of which are bitterly cold and unpleasant — cancelled trips, months of unemployment and a stint in a job that didn’t end so well, the death of a close friend and a few in the family, the inevitably long process of finding nourishing community, family issues and stresses, and months of exhausting self-discovery prompted by sifting through years of trauma. In these heavier times, life often feels too stifled to find the motivation for even the things we’re most passionate about, much less the drudgery and mundanity of things we don’t love (i.e. job applications). I guess that’s the long arm of grief.
Earlier this year I read Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, and, whew, there’s a lot packed in it. But, the main crux of the book is about learning to identify the traumas of our past and changing the unhealthy tendencies and habits that result from those traumas. The arduous act of unlearning and rewriting. One quote that particularly struck a chord was:
“Change begins when we learn to ‘own’ our emotional brains…Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable.”
It’s interesting, this juxtaposing of befriending and obliteration. But I think it’s very on the nose. Many prescribe specific things as “killers of creativity or motivation,” but the one I’ve found very relatable is passive (and sometimes subconscious) avoidance. It’s so much safer to believe that we could do something rather than running the risk of trying, failing and discovering with certainty that we can’t. So we — or our brains, rather — avoid starting things. We avoid risks to avoid feeling small. Again, sometimes distraction is good. But, as with anything, it’s balance that strikes the final chord; it’s the ineluctable demand of life. Importantly, though, I don’t think the balance is necessarily between doing or avoiding, but coming to terms with the why behind the doing and avoiding and learning to accept and even welcome both in their appropriate moments.
Part of that avoidance comes from the myriad ways in which we’ve subscribed to the modern myth that our worth is weighed by our productivity (thanks capitalism). That we could somehow be defined by how much we do, how often we’re plugged in, how we accumulate the things we desire, how far we get in life. In the end we become checklists defined by the whims of the world’s perception: we forsake ourselves, waterlogged by the sea of comparison and lost with no direction because we chose to become that which we are not: an image rather than an individual. This reality is compounded by the ever-present access we have to everyone else’s exciting lives on social media. While we may acknowledge that these highlight reels reveal only what others want us to see, we often forget we’re all in a process of becoming. And becoming includes all visible and unseen.
When we are distracted by these infinite permutations of life, it’s easy to be overwhelmed and do nothing because we know we can’t do everything. Or we do the things we think matter and end up empty in the end cause we pursued the mirage of fabricated happiness rather than the freedom of personal joy. We chose to reside in a life medicated by escapism and fueled by a nostalgia for impossibilities. Again, it’s more comfortable to believe we can do all these things, fit the mold, be this or that, than to take the risk and find failure at the end. But that’s not real life, nor a life worth chasing.
As I’ve been reflecting on this absolute sh*tshow of a year, I’ve been thinking a lot about fire. Growing up in Southern California, fire is just a normal occurrence and I’m no stranger to its destructive capacities. In recent years we’ve seen them ravage and destroy livelihoods, entire habitats, biodiversity and wildlife, and communities across the world. While it’s undeniably an extremely destructive force, it’s also one that offers and brings new life. Earlier this year I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s revelatory Braiding Sweetgrass, where she writes about her father teaching a group of children about the good of fire at a Native youth science camp. He says,
“The land gives us so many gifts…fire is a way we can give back.”
Indigenous culture sees it as the end of one thing for the opportunity of another. Growth emerges from the ash. A tearing away to bring new life. I like to think it’s why so many talk about fire as mesmerizing: we’re watching as things literally fall away to reveal a new form and we’re transfixed by the power behind this transformation.
I see this year as one of death and disappointment. Absolutely a tearing away of sorts. Heavy, I know... But as I approach my next decade next month, I’ve begun to think of life as an endless process of “Becoming” demarcated by “Trials of Fire.” As we go through life, all things come in their own time — the good and the bad — and we are shaped not just by those things but by how we step forward from those moments. As we step, we are free to carry forward and breathe life into what we find important and shed what no longer serves us. Sometimes this looks, and can feel a lot like fire. But that’s (annoyingly) where the good growth blossoms. Moving forward from these moments requires that we be present with ourselves; aware of when we need to be distracted and when we are merely distracting ourselves.
So, I guess what I’m getting at is this: In this next seasons I’m asking myself the question of how to find discipline and motivation in the mundane, in the heaviness and stifling, in the unearthing of shit that’s been barricaded behind carefully curated armor for years, in the moments when you feel like you’re not where you’re supposed to be, in the days we feel completely stuck in our habits.
I think the first step is accepting the truth. The truth that sometimes you need to just be rather than do. Accepting that everyone’s growth and healing have different rhythms. Including our own.
Once you accept truth in feeling (*remember, befriending rather than obliterating…), forgiveness is likely the necessary next step. Self-directed anger/bitterness from the stagnancy produced by things worlds beyond our control is a heaviness that was never meant to be carried. Especially not alone. It’s okay to be tired. Feeling defeated is a part of life. Accepting defeat is probably even more essential.
But the big thing is knowing that you don’t have to be a certain way before you can move forward; to do the things you want to; to pursue the dreams you want for yourself. If life is a process of Becoming, there’s no reason to expect healing or growth to be otherwise. Jedidiah Jenkins is one of my favorite authors and his books are ones I return to regularly and so, naturally, there’s a quote that really hits a home run here:
“A dream is the myriad ways we could be fulfilled in life using our talents to make beautiful things. But then there are goals. Goals are specific guesses at what we could do or become to fulfill our dream. Dreams are like a compass that points in a general direction, and goals are the islands in the ocean along the way. Goals are just guesses at where to make a home, and when they aren’t right, we try another. It isn’t a death, and it doesn’t negate the dream.”
— To Shake the Sleeping Self
I’m notorious for taking setbacks as deaths along the way. And maybe in some sense they are, but like Jenkins says, it doesn’t negate the dream. Allowing myself to steep in comparison and distraction, and avoiding the ways in which this year has been less than ideal has likely hindered some needed change. But I’m also learning to be gentler with myself. In a way, I think that there’s a strange beauty in unaccomplished goals and dreams: it’s a subtle reminder that there’s an ever-flowing river full of “more” waiting for us to pursue and discover whatever we like in its waters.
And in the end, I think there’s comfort and freedom in knowing that we’re all forever just a bunch of people in different processes of Becoming — grateful for the things we’ve learned and free to take all the parts of us as we continue to unearth the really quite incredible stories we are and will be. Maybe the Becoming is connected to the realization that what makes us, “Us,” is as much the parts we shed as the parts we choose to sow to our bones in our forward motion. Be there. Embrace paradox.
All in its own time; the rest will be ashes.
