What’s Holding You Back?

Feel as if you’re spinning your wheels? Working harder than ever and getting no closer to your goals? Think some invisible force is holding you back?

Well, you are correct. In fact, the whole universe is holding you back. This is because the universe is busy fighting chaos everywhere and really wants you to settle down and stay in your assigned seat while it does that. Let me explain.

The invisible force is inertia, and the universe pumps you full of inertia every day to keep you in your place. But the universe knows that humans like to believe they are doing things, so the infusions of inertia will look like choices and activities and potential progress. But none of them will amount to anything — not really.

Always with the yin and the yang…

For instance, every day, you experience a barrage of opportunities to hustle, focus, boost your creativity, power through your day, and pull ahead of the pack— $19.99 a month; sign here.

On the same day, you are entreated to rest up, calm down, and let go of thoughts, ego, everything but emptiness — $19.99 a month; sign here.

See? Balance maintained.

Or you pick up a magazine, which has seven recipes for mouthwatering desserts — tortes, puddings, cookies, pies. The very same issue also has a fool-proof seven-day diet plan and a not-so-mouthwatering cleanse. Which you now need. Plus some exercises you can do while in line at the grocery store.

Balance maintained.

As you move through the day, you are surrounded by massive commercial campaigns to persuade you to make yourself beautiful, handsome, sexy, and therefore irresistible to men, women, and the undeclared.

But equally massive energies are also deployed to deal with the wrong-thinking people who harass you and make your life a living hell because, they artlessly claim, you are literally irresistible.

That twisted status quo’s going nowhere fast.

Life as a zero-sum proposition

In life, you are told to “follow your bliss” by putting in countless hours of hard work, though the hours you will put in leave you little time to actually live the rest of your actual life. You have to earn enough money to pay others to do those things for you.

When you reach the top of your game, you are an executive and you no longer get to do the thing you loved to do. You are just watching other people do it. You are no longer living your life, either. You are just watching other people live it.

Pick out what you want — and then pay for it

A smart woman once told me, “You can have anything you want. You just can’t have everything you want.” Not true for everyone and not in every case, of course. But most of the time, we pay for our choices, one way or another.

We get a hefty student loan package for a liberal arts degree, but it costs us years of servitude. I paid off my last student loan when I retired.

We get a better job, but if it has a longer commute time, we are lucky to break even.

We get a better lover or partner, but it costs us our youth and our optimism. This maxim applies even if the better lover is only the original lover after massive, regular overhauls of your relationship.

And we all have examples of life lessons we only learned after they cost us, personally. It sure would have been nice to learn them for free, and get ahead a little, wouldn’t it? But… no. The universe doesn’t work that way. Nobody gets anything for free.

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

That was the Red Queen talking to Alice about Wonderland, and indeed, we often feel we are living in Wonderland. But the Red Queen then tells Alice to run twice as fast if she hopes to get anywhere, and I think that’s bad advice, even if you need the cardio.

Because, really — think of it on a cosmic scale. Even if you run twice as fast, how far across the universe do you really think you’re going to get, in your four-score-and-ten?

What’s the point then, Sparky?

Me? I’m going to save my $19.99 a month on frantic schemes for how-to-get-somewhere-I’m-not. I’m not going to worry about getting somewhere else, because I probably won’t.

Instead, I’m going to be here now. Pardon the moronic aphorism, but that’s really my only choice, isn’t it?

Oh, I’m still going to do what I do — write, preach, various other side hustles. I’m just not going to try to do those things.

I’m going full Yoda: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

• Instead of trying to get to the destination, I’ll relax and enjoy the ride. That way, every day, I’m home.
• I’ll quit comparing my progress with those college friends who all got famous, or those other friends who have way more money than me, or that woman who manages to make me feel so gauche, somehow. Then, all my competitors become my colleagues.
• I’m going to seriously have more fun. Yes, I know that sounds strange. But seriously is how I do everything.
• I’m going to help other people more. It is my rock bottom belief that the best way to be happier is to serve others. (The trick is to be sure I’m really helping and not just showing off or butting in. Which, you’ve probably noticed, are what people mostly do because those things are more fun than actually helping.)

In general, I’m giving up on the need to see progress, movement, or improvement. And, paradoxically, studies show I’ll get just as much done, and maybe more. I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, you’ll hear me happily saying to myself, when no one’s around,

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m making good time!