On Any Given Day

When we’re asked the impossible, we’re doomed to fail.

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On any given day the loop is already playing when I awake…

“You need to start your day right if you want to succeed.”

“When you wake up in the morning, list your gratitudes. Your morning routine needs to have time with God, affirmations, meditation, at least 30 minutes of yoga or exercise. Read and journal daily. Oh, don’t forget to make your bed, shower, hydrate, and eat a healthy breakfast!”

“How does anyone have time for all that?” I wonder as I choose my top priorities for the first hour.

The contradictions rush in and I’m left doubting my own decisions.

“Spend the first two hours writing when your brain is nice and fresh. How can you expect to create content if you’re not taking the time to write!”

“Get up at 5:00 so you get some uninterrupted work time before the kids wake up.”

“Start the day right and make your family a healthy, nourishing breakfast to fuel themselves for the day. That’s your responsibility.”

When my children inevitably enter the room, long before my routine is done, I’m torn. Do I set clear boundaries and expectations and continue with my routine? Or do I greet them and attend to their needs and give them my full attention?

“You’re no good to anyone if you don’t prioritize yourself.”

“You must make eye contact with your children when they make a bid for your attention. Otherwise, you teach them they don’t matter.”

I look at the phone instead to address an urgent business matter.

While Thich Naht Hanh whispers in my ear “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”

There are contradicting tasks asked of us each day.

And when we’re asked the impossible, of course we “fail.”

Can we blame ‘late-stage capitalism?’ A screwed up economy? Or are those easy-outs that absolve us of personal responsibility?

Is it truly possible to pay the mortgage while mending some broken part of the world? Why does war always get paid for while there’s never enough in the budget for creating or sustaining life? Or is professional “success” just for the put-together women for whom business comes naturally?

Have I allowed unreasonable expectations in? Or are they osmotically absorbed by the written and unwritten rules binding us all to too-busy, shallow lives?

Mid day, I’ve already failed 100 ways.

“You need better boundaries, just say no to things that don’t grow your business.”

“Write your book.”

“Just take this one more class. Invest in yourself! You deserve it.”

Whose voices are those creeping into our conversations at every moment, entrapping us, stripping away our dignity without our permission?

“Count your blessings. You chose this. Not everyone has the opportunities you have.”

“Check your privilege. Think about all the women who had to sacrifice so you can have these privileges and you don’t even appreciate it.”

The perpetual “self care” messages knock on my brain robotically… I can’t help but wonder “did our ancestors think like this?”

“You can’t help others when you're empty.”
“You’re still getting migraines? Have you tried ice baths?”
“Your life will improve if you make time for the Lord every day.”
“Walk in nature every day.”
“Touch soil. Get grounded.”
“Get enough sleep.
“Use blue-light blockers.”
“Don’t work past 6:00pm.”
“Write more.”
“Write less. Content is valuable.”
“Consistency is key.”
“You have to communicate with your audience.”
“Take the summer off. At least 1 month. Remember, a break IS a business decision. You can’t focus or be creative if you’re burned out.”
“Travel more. You need a change of scenery.”

“But,” I think, “I don’t get paid if I don’t work. Taking the summer off is impossible—my business would collapse. What do you mean ‘travel more?’ I have responsibilities here.”

“Just post to FB more.”

“You’re not on social media? Good for you! Stay off social media..”

”You’re off social media? Not everyone can do that. That's a privilege.”

“Why aren’t you on social media? You need to get all those ideas out there and let people know what you have to offer. Don’t hide your light!”

But the numbers aren’t lying. Ends don’t meet anymore.

The doubt gallops back.

Maybe I do need to get back on social media even though it’s hell?

“Get your business out there. How can they buy from you if they don’t know you exist?”

“Just build a course! You’ve got so much to share with the world!”

“All you need to do is publicize more.”

And then there’s the constant unconscious comparisons. Bright shiny faces of beautiful women with massive followings or successful businesses leer at me from websites highlighting my every flaw, every failure, every insecurity. How does success come so readily to some?

“Can’t you be more like her. You teach the same things. Why aren’t you getting more clients? What about her—you’ve been teaching what she says for years. Why can’t you get that kind of traction?”

“But she’s married to an attorney and she has a staff?” I want to say. “And that other one, she’s independently wealthy?”

But instead, I just nod.

“Mmmm Hmmmm” I say. “I have a course done, I better get to work publicizing it.”

Another friend reminds me “when you’re going through hell, keep going.”

So, I tighten my routine. Again. Add more to it. Get up a little earlier. Keep a stricter schedule.

“If you really want to succeed, you need to be flexible. You need to give your mind new experiences regularly. Adapt. Be willing to change”

“Find meaning in your suffering.”

“Accept what is. Surrender.”

“Stay consistent so people know what to expect.”

“You need to take a day off to just think.”

“Don’t forget to have fun! Make room for fun in your life.”

As someone else tells me “Your worth isn’t about how much you produce, or how much you make, you are a worthy child of God. Try just being.”

But “worthiness” doesn’t pay the bills and the stress compounds like interest.

And by the end of the day, I’ve failed another 100 ways, and I’m everyone’s villain.

And the voices keep telling me to be grateful because I’m not in Auschwitz or getting bombed in a war far away, and I’m not starving or being human trafficked…

But I’m not happy.

Maybe none of us are right now because we’re all dying slowly from inflated bureaucracy that sucks the life out of us as we’re trapped in disparity we didn’t create, and I’ve never actually gotten to see the glory of stars in the night sky because of severe light pollution the whole time I’ve been alive and one step outside confronts me with the skin-ripping assault of leaf blowers as other powerless people chase a few leaves pretending like they have some control over life, or nature, and I realize that what I want is to breath clean air and drink clean water, and listen to the birds singing, and not have to wonder how much plastic we’re ingesting every week, or when another bomb is gonna get dropped, or how much longer the topsoil will last. And I wonder why there’s always, always enough money in every budget for endless war, and for destruction disguised as development, and there’s plenty of funding to increase surveillance and mine every detail of our lives for data, and to buy more stuff we don’t need. But there's never enough to pay the people who grow things and make things, and breathe life back into a dying world.

But we’ve screwed it up so bad and I’m choking every day on all the ways we’re forced to participate in making things worse whether we like it or not just to survive the way things are.

I don’t wanna “survive.”

But I don’t wanna die. Not yet.

I want to make it better and find the other souls who want a cleaner world with stars at night. A world that knows that life is for watching the butterflies flit from flower to flower, and listening to the birds sing, and a world where we can drink clean water, eat nourishing food, listen to or tell stories around a fire, and watch life unfold as we dance in the fields. And a world where we can build quiet homes in the forests and hunt, fish, and forage when we’re hungry.

No! No—it’s not a Utopia. It’s a world filled with hard work, but the kind of hard work that we’re built for. Work worth doing and worth doing together.

That’s what people are for.

And I want to be part of a world with other soft souls who see the humanness and the divine in each other and we let the watermelon juice drip down our chins as the sun sets in the summertime and we spit the seeds as far as we can as we watch the lightning bugs flicker on and off.

That’s not the world I’m in. But I still want to build it. Or grow it. Even as we must straddle this other, darker world. And some days I believe we can, and some days I know we can’t. But it doesn’t matter what I believe or what I don't if we can’t even find each other and some are walking off the cliffs of despair because it’s all too much and I don’t blame them.

Here’s my hand. Take it, and maybe, just maybe, we can walk into this new world, and together we’ll look up and see the stars at night.

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