The trick to picking the hill you're willing to die on is to blindly commit and then be relentless with yourself. Don’t fuss too much in the selection process because the hill itself is not really the point. Sometimes it's germane to your suffering, but it doesn't have to be. I know this because sometimes I pick a hill without even realizing I've done so; I only find out when the going gets rough, and I observe myself deciding to double down. In fact, I had this experience just this week.
Like every other morning, I sat down that day to work on a piece of writing and found myself ensnared by feelings that were-mmmm–totally over the top for the situation. And instead of putting the pen down and walking away, I decided to get into it with myself, even though I could tell that it wasn't going to end well. What an odd thing it is to observe yourself being outrageous with yourself and then reacting to yourself with exasperation. It's hilarious to think about now. It was not remotely amusing at the time.
I woke up the following day cranky but intensely curious about the tantrum. So I jotted down some possible motives, talked to a couple of friends about it, and did a little restorative house cleaning. Two themes emerged.
I almost always feel like garbage at the end of the year, and it's usually because I succumb to the pressure of believing I should feel some other way* than I do**. The end of the year, even one where it feels like time never moves, always sneaks up on me in this way that provokes a panic that I've somehow fallen behind. Behind who and behind on what is always unclear. Intellectually I understand that time is a construct, but nothing in our culture tells me to disregard that construct, especially as the years tick by.
*Inspired and visionary
**Exhausted and uncertain
The less clear I am about my connection to a goal, the more likely I am to take it too far. When I don't have a relationship, a felt connection, to a plan or project, it's hard to gauge the difference between pushing myself and forcing something. That's where I think I get lost. It's as if I've learned the vocabulary of a new language but taken no interest in the culture, so when I attempt to be funny, I'm offensive, or vice versa.
The lack of connection casts a shadow of futility over the entire endeavor, whether I "succeed" or not because I don't know why I'm there. It also means that when I get stuck or have that lost feeling, there's no clear destination or motivation around which to orient myself.
When I sat down at my desk the morning after, I asked what would it look like to be kind to myself today? I didn’t have an obvious answer, but after mulling over these themes, it feels like it comes down to a willingness to be curious–and honest with myself– about why I'm doing the things I'm doing.
In the summer of 2006, my husband and I went to Alaska. We spent one day hiking around a park that was only accessible by boat. Dropped on the beach in the morning, we were warned not to miss our pickup that afternoon, or we'd be camping for the night. It was great, and we might have been in a little over our heads. Thankfully, the only other living creature we saw during our eight hours of walking was a marmot.
After hiking for a few hours, we arrived at a lush, verdant bowl. Turning to face the direction we came from, we had an incredible view of Resurrection Bay and the peaks across the way. It was a lovely spot to sit down and have lunch. There was just one snag; I had a secret wish to be a rugged outdoors person, and I was sure that part of what that meant was always going to the top. We weren't at the top; we were at the base of a bowl.
Nevermind that my hiking companion had a slightly sketchy knee situation, that we had a time constraint, or that he didn't want to go up there. I announced that I was going and would happily go on my own. Yes, I bullied him into going with me. The picture above captures me, in a moment of enthusiasm bordering on mania, picking my hill. Up we went. No one got hurt. The view from the top was gorgeous but not markedly better than the one below. But the walk up to that ridge? Not fun at all; it was a steep, gravelly slog. And for what?
I didn't regret it exactly, but I felt funny about it. A few months later, I had a mug made with that photo, and the phrase Getting there might be worth it; poking fun at myself as a way of almost apologizing.
I've been this way for as long as I can remember, prone to what I now think of as dissociated wanting. The highest rewards always came from performing in ways that others expected of me, and I liked rewards, so I happily obliged. As a result, I didn't spend much time developing a firm sense of myself as anything beyond an achiever. Coming to understand this about myself as an adult was incredibly helpful but also a little bit embarrassing.
Earlier this year, I read an elegant articulation of my experience of being a bit of a stranger to myself and the consequences of that estrangement–jealousy, perpetual dissatisfaction, doubt–in an advice column. While I was reading it, I kept glancing over my shoulder–jaw dropped–to an invisible audience as if to say, Can you believe this? This is an actual thing! I'd never heard or read anyone talk about this experience that was so familiar to me and that I'd worked so hard to keep a secret.
If there's any mark this year has made on me, it's a greater understanding of the reality that we have no idea how much time we've got. The fear I feel when I think about this hasn't inspired me to hustle, to hurry up, and jam as much in as I can for FOMO. It's almost the opposite. I've become more interested in discerning what matters to me. What feels most pressing is to steer clear of the just get through its, stop shoulding on myself, and spend more time imagining what I would do if the kind of person I secretly wanted to be was me.
Be safe, be well, and most importantly, be you.
-S
