On that voice inside telling you, you can't stop
Productivity and worth have nothing to do with each other
This is the Next: the Newsletter, the weekly newsletter that mixes personal essays and social critique, and, where I, inspired by literature, psychology, and all my spiritual practices, attempt to make meaning out of what happens: to me, and to us all.
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Last week I was hit by a weird flu. It started as a stomach bug, and brought me to my knees so swiftly I barely had the energy to complain. It felt, for all intents and purposes, like a return to the depths of mother's womb: a place of utter vulnerability, and extreme not-knowing.
I was reminded of that cartoon from a few years back, where two twins are inside the womb, and the one asks the other: “do you believe in Mom?” except in my flustate what I kept asking myself was not whether I believed in Mom, (or even, God) but whether I believed in the gods and goddesses of the query process, a
Meanwhile, whenever the flu gave me a break, I read about World War I (and thought about Ukraine, and Gaza) as I devoured Ken Follett's book Fall of Giants. One passage in particular stuck with me.
We’re in France, and the British forces are preparing an offensive (which to this day we know as the Battle of the Somme). The weather is bad, and there is talk of delaying or even cancelling the attack. Evans, a commander—who is working class—hopes the offensive will be delayed. But it’s not up to him. Here’s his conversation with Fitz, an English aristocrat.
“Be realistic,” he (Fitz) said to Evans.
“We’ve been preparing this offensive for six months. This is our major action for 1916. All our effort has been put into it. How could it be canceled? Haig would have to resign. It might even bring down Asquith’s government.”
Evans seemed angered by that remark. His cheeks flushed and his voice went up in pitch. “Better for the government to fall than for us to send our men up against entrenched machine guns.”
Fitz shook his head. “Look at the millions of tons of supplies that have been shipped, the roads and railways we’ve built to bring them here, the hundreds of thousands of men trained and armed and brought here from all over Britain. What will we do—send them all home?”
There was a long silence; then Evans said: “You’re right, of course, Major.” His words were conciliatory but his tone was one of barely suppressed rage. “We won’t send them home,” he said through clenched teeth. “We will bury them here.”
Ken Follett. Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, Book 1) (p. 412).
I found that conversation terrifying. Not only because it seems to mirror so well what is going on in the world, but because I think we all have a Fitz inside of us, who, out of pride or stubbornness, feels that it is not worth stopping, not even when the price is life itself.
As Marian Donner wrote in her book on Self Destruction, our society has convinced us that there is nothing to stop us, only ourselves. As she writes, since Apple launched its motto “Think Different” and Nike doubled down with “Just do it,” we became the product. The implication being that, when we have a dream, an ambition, a project, we end up telling ourselves we cannot stop. But haven’t you noticed how, sometimes, it is not when you push and push, and strive and strive for things to happen, but when you just let go and relax, that they actually do?
Fitz is a voice that we all have inside, and it is not necessarily a wise voice. But it’s the kind of inner voice that wants to protect us.
As Marian Donner wrote in her book on Self Destruction, our society has convinced us that there is nothing to stop us, only ourselves. As she writes, since Apple launched its motto “Think Different” and Nike doubled down with “Just do it,” we became the product. The implication being that, when we have a dream, an ambition, a project, we end up telling ourselves we cannot stop.
“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” a Nike slogan suggested in 2018.
As long as we work hard, exercise, save, buy a house, do everything we can to avoid sickness, vulnerability, and the need to rely on anyone else, we will be ok, we tell ourselves.
But that’s precisely the kind of inner dialogue that makes us feel disconnected from ourselves and our value, and that brings us further and further into despair.
If there is one way for me to know I am stressed, it is when I notice that I feel like I can’t take a break.
And haven’t you noticed how, sometimes, it is not when you push and push, and strive and strive for things to happen, but when you just let go and relax, that they actually do? Things sometimes come our way not when we pursue them relentlessly, but when we focus on something else, and give ourselves permission to believe we deserve what we want.
There’s always going to be that inner voice that sounds like Fitz. The one that tells us that the world is hostile, and we have “to be realistic.”
That doesn’t mean it’s telling the truth.