How I Learned About Striving
What are the messages you have been told about success in life? What associations do you have about achievement and self worth? If I get really gritty and honest with myself, for me, it has always been a simple but deadly equation: Achievement = Self Worth. Yikes.
This message was reiterated in almost every setting in my life. For example, my PhD program was relentless. More publications and more proposals and more research dollars and more teaching led to more items to list on my CV, more prestige, more reward, and more recognition. I felt valued only for my accomplishments, which drove me to do more and more. And the cycle continued. It was a cruel, implacable hamster wheel.
None of these things on their own were wrong. It was a school of social work after all, dedicated to the well-being of human kind. More research was a positive thing. But at what cost? There were few (if any) people within those walls at whom I could look and think, “Wow, they are HAPPY!” or “They embody JOY!” Nope. It was stress and pain and late nights and tough meetings and all-night projects and hours and hours and hours of over time and lots of competition and (frankly) cranky, miserable people. All working toward the goal of improving human well-being… at the expense of human well-being. These were very mixed messages.
My school was not alone in embodying this irony. Most businesses and institutions cultivate this atmosphere - more, more, more, grow, grow, grow, strive, strive, strive.
Ingredients for Striving Stew
It wasn’t really my PhD program’s fault. I boarded the over-functioning train as a small child and I bet most of the faculty and staff at my university did too. I grew up in a very conservative, religious community and the message was that the more we did, the closer to heaven we got. If we performed well, if we were loving and giving and zealous and good, if we confessed and believed, we could earn approval from our leaders and ultimately from God. Of course, there was some talk about “grace” and “forgiveness of sins” if we messed up, but absolutely no talk about things like accepting, allowing, being, non-striving.
The message was that you are broken and something is wrong with you.
Strive. Do more. Pray more. Fix it.
Oh, and don’t forget, confess your sins at our church and get to heaven.
This message is reiterated and compounded in every advertisement we see...with just a slightly different twist. A concrete floor of religious puritanism is the perfect foundation for building rugged, individualistic, American capitalism. It goes like this:
You are not thin, sexy, pretty, fashionable, rich, masculine/feminine, good enough. You are incomplete. Something is wrong with you.
Strive. Do more. Shop more. Fix it.
Oh, and don’t forget, buy our product to fill your soul hole.
And so it gets complicated for us. 2 cups of religious messages marinated for hundreds of years in western, Christian history; 1 cup of mixed advertisements, billboards, and pop-ups; 3 tablespoons of harmful work habits; a few unhealthy self-help books about success. Stir rigorously. Simmer for thirty or forty years. And boom: a delicious recipe for STRIVING ALL THE TIME STEW.
Getting Off the Over-Functioning Train
Two summers ago I was reading through one of Mary Oliver’s collections of poetry (my patron saint of poetry), and I literally gasped as I read these words from her poem Wild Geese:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
I had to read it over and over again:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to be good.
Woah. Wait. WUT?!
Non-Striving
Can that be true? I do not have to be good? I do not have to walk on my knees for hundreds of miles repenting, or spend years of my life at the altar of success? This idea of non-striving had crossed my path before – it is one of the pillars of mindfulness practice - but somehow I GOT IT when I read this poem.
Non-striving is NOT about sitting on the couch and binge watching Netflix for the rest of your life. It is not about abandoning all your life goals and eating ice cream by the quart in your pajamas. But it IS about understanding that your worth does not lie in your accomplishments. It IS about a deep, gut-level awakening to the fact that you are more than the sum of the items on your resume, or your church attendance record. It IS about learning to be ok with life exactly as it is, right here, right now. It IS about allowing, being, letting go. Not everything has to be about achieving something or working for something or buying the right product or confessing the right sins. You do not have to be good. You do not have to be bad either. You just have to be you. Without judgment.
This is what Mary Oliver is talking about.
She says to simply love what you love. Be who you are.
You already fit. You are an integral part of this big, wide, diverse, messy, sumptuously chaotic world. And you are made to be exactly who you are. No groveling. No striving. Just being. Just recognizing your fragile and soft humanity. Just accepting this delicate animal body as it is. Just giving yourself compassion. Just allowing yourself to be fully, completely alive.
And then stepping up and taking your place in the world.
Knowing you belong in the family of things.