Hi Friends-
This opening will be short and sweet because I'm on retreat. 😌
But I'll share one small seed — a concept from Gary Nabhan that I discovered in Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass.
Restoration = Re-story-ation
What a beautiful idea, that the restoration of anything — your peace of mind, for example, or the vitality of our Earth — depends upon learning how to tell ourselves new stories.
This idea feels very resonant as I try to let go of old stories to make way for the new.
Below, you'll find an essay that keys into some of the stories that we tell ourselves about self-actualization.
Much love,
Jocelyn
Why fulfillment is always out of reach
I spend a lot of time thinking about the conditioning that we receive around the idea of productivity. And lately, I've been tuning into the more subtle layers of this conditioning as I move through my days—noticing how the desire to be "more productive", to be farther along, to be progressing faster, to have gotten more things done is constantly pulling me away from being fully present to the task at hand.
There's this energy of wanting to rush past what's happening right now to get to something "better" in the future — an inability to relax into, and be fulfilled by, whatever is happening in the present moment. And I've been wondering about where this inability to feel fulfilled comes from, what's its roots are.
Which sent me back to the work of two deep thinkers, who are both sociologists and philosophers: Renata Salecl and Zygmunt Bauman.
I had Salecl on the Hurry Slowly podcast back in 2018 to talk about The Tyranny of Choice, a book that really deepened my understanding of how capitalism shapes us.
Here's a passage that has always stuck with me:
"Capitalism has always played on our feelings of inadequacy, as well as on the perception that we are free to decide the path we will take in the future and thereby improve our lives. From the late seventeenth century on, the Enlightenment project prompted the idea of choice — giving rise to our modern conceptions of political freedom, the relationship between mind and body, lover and loved, child and parent. And capitalism, of course, has encouraged not only the idea of consumer choice but also the ideology of the self-made man, which allowed the individual to start seeing his own life as a series of options and possible transformations."
She continues a few pages later…
"Nowadays, becoming 'self-made' is not so straightforward. In the developed world, a young man or woman does not simply follow a steady path up the social or economic ladder: Survival, even relative prosperity, may be taken for granted. So the mission becomes self-invention. For postmodern professionals life itself is a kind of artwork or enterprise, something to be refined, revised, improved on, and success consists of the fullest possible expression. The idea of choice has thus become radicalized: everything in life has become a matter of decisions that need to be made carefully in order to come close to the ideal of happiness and self-fulfillment that society promotes."
Salecl is arguing, essentially, that we are acculturated to believe that self-invention — the fullest expression of our self — is of paramount importance. She's also emphasizing the incredible pressure that this places on the individual, and every little choice we make. Because each one of those choices has the potential to bring us even closer to this ideal, fulfilled version of ourselves.
But, somehow, this "fulfillment" is always elusive — why?
Zygmunt Bauman starts to point to an answer in his book Liquid Modernity, when he writes:
"At the threshold of the modern era, we have been emancipated from belief in the act of creation, revelation and eternal condemnation. With such beliefs out of the way, we humans found ourselves 'on our own' — which means that from then on, we knew of no limits to improvement and self-improvement other than the shortcomings of our own inherent or acquired gifts, resourcefulness, nerve, will and determination…
Being modern came to mean, as it means today, being unable to stop and even less able to stand still. We move and are bound to keep moving not so much because of the 'delay of gratification,' as Max Weber suggested, as because of the impossibility of ever being gratified: The horizon of satisfaction, the finishing line of effort and the moment of restful self-congratulation move faster than the fastest of the runners. Fulfillment is always in the future, and achievements lose their attraction and satisfying potential at the moment of their attainment, if not before. Being modern means being perpetually ahead of oneself, in a state of constant transgression… it also means having an identity which can exist only as an unfulfilled project."
Ouch.
While it could sound like Bauman and Salecl's arguments are at odds with each other, I think they are really just two sides of the same catch-22 that we are living in here in late capitalism: The anxiety-inducing imperative to constantly be moving towards ever-greater self-fulfillment, self-invention, or self-actualization versus an inability to actually stand still, sink into, and appreciate our achievements while we are on this journey of self-actualization.
Or, to put it another way: If we are always rushing towards fulfillment, we will never actually experience fulfillment. And if we never experience fulfillment, we will continue to regard ourselves as inadequate, unfinished "products" and will continue seeking further self-development in order to try to realize our full potential.
This is the vicious cycle of conditioning that we are caught in.
As I contemplate this cycle and my own role in it, I am starting to tune into how this inability to be fulfilled unfolds in very subtle ways.
On a micro level: Sometimes, even as I'm writing — and ostensibly enjoying the writing! — I'll notice myself jumping ahead, wanting the work to be unfolding faster, wanting it to already be complete so that I can tend to something else that urgently needs my attention. Even as I'm seemingly "immersed" in my creative process, I can feel my attention trying to peel away from the present moment and race into the future.
On a more macro level: I recently noticed how, even though I am very content with my home and feel lucky to be here, I constantly contemplate a future situation in which I will move. And that future possibility governs how I exist in the house now, and even how I make decisions.
One morning last week, the fire alarm in my guest room went off and I rushed to turn it off, only to find carpenter ants pouring out of the ceiling around the alarm. Initially, I thought the ants had set off the alarm. Later, I realized what had probably happened was that the alarm sounded because the battery was dead, and the ants emerged simply because the sound annoyed them. In conclusion: Carpenter ants are living in the ceiling of my guest room.
And it turns out that if I am living in the present moment, the ants don't really bother me. Mostly, they hide in the interior of the house — munching away, ostensibly — and we co-exist just fine. If I find one roaming around, I put it outside or let it continue on its way. But if I shift my mind into the future, where I might wish to sell the house, the situation becomes "a problem" that needs to be dealt with immediately.
This might sound like a digression, but my point is that the ants are teaching me about where my mind is most of the time. And the answer is: Not here.
Not here where I actually am, not here where I am actually living, not here with the task I am actually doing. Not here in the present moment, which is the only place where fulfillment is actually available.
When productivity and self-actualization are the values that we hold dear, it's hard to appreciate where we are right now.
We ricochet between the guilt of what's undone (productivity) and the fantasy of what's next (self-actualization). We toggle back and forth between what should be and what could be, never resting with what is.
And yet: Fulfillment can only happen in the present moment.
As I notice my mind trying to peel away, again and again, into that fantasy of the future, I try to come back into presence, to allow myself to sink more deeply into the task at hand, and maybe even take joy in it.
Because if I believe I must always be rushing forward in order to find fulfillment, I will never find it.
Fulfillment doesn't live in the future.
LINK ABOUT IT
The problem with the self as a speculative project. A thought-provoking essay from Tara McMullin on the problem with personal growth as an integral part of our identities: "The ongoing project of our self-transformation and growth is sold as a positive right. We have a right (nay, a duty) to make ourselves into the best, most marketable, successful, and valuable version of ourselves. In fact, our livelihood and position in society depend on it."
"The soul travels at the speed of walking." A beautiful reflection by travel writer Nick Hunt on the value of roaming and what it means to move slowly in a world that is obsessed with speed: "The journalist Paul Salopek, currently 11 years into a walk along the path of human migration from Africa's Rift Valley to the tip of South America... talks of walking in terms of musicality. In a recent interview with Emergence, he likened it to 'a stylus dropping into a groove on the surface of a planet and making this music. And we are, our bodies are, that stylus, and we're meant to move at this RPM that comes with the movement of our body.' Rebecca Solnit put it more succinctly: Walking 'is how the body measures itself against the Earth.'"
The Internet, AI, and "the great flattening." A smart, informative piece about how Apple's recent ill-conceived ad, in which a raft of analog creative tools are crushed into an iPad, is an apt metaphor for "the great flattening" that continues to unfold in the digital age: "The duality of Apple's ad speaks to the reality of technology: its impact is structural, and amoral... If there is a single phrase that describes the effect of the Internet, it is the elimination of friction. With the loss of friction, there is necessarily the loss of everything built on friction, including value, privacy, and livelihoods."
"The sea was never meant to be calm. Waves are part of the design." A beautiful essay from poet Andrea Gibson: "From early childhood we are taught that the definition of a good life is one in which the waters are routinely calm, where our boat is rarely rocked. Culture instructs us to think that the sea of life should be tranquil, and any ripple means something has gone wrong. But the sea was never meant to be calm. Waves are part of the design. A static ocean would not sustain life, nor would a challengeless existence. I know this for sure—the parts of my life that have threatened to sink me were the parts that awoke me to my capacity to sail."
WHEN you do something matters as much as WHAT you're doing. The importance of "when" is a concept I talk about quite a bit in my RESET course, and I enjoyed David Cain's take on it in this essay: "Just by doing something at a different time, under different conditions, you can make good things feel much easier and more natural to do, or make not-so-good things harder."
A love letter to comedy with Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello (creators of "Hacks").
"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts."
When you finally get the hang of manifesting.
The hidden world of plant intelligence.
Offerings: How you can work with me ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ Join KILN, my brand new creative incubator. Got a creative project that's been on the back burner for too long? KILN is a transformative space for turning half-baked creative ideas into a reality. The spring session is happening now and we are having so much fun! Registration for the Fall session will open in August. Click here to share your email and be notified when it does! Book a one-on-one energy session with Jocelyn. I love doing energy work with folks who are looking to get in deeper touch with their heart's purpose, their creativity, or their intuition. If you haven't experienced energy work before and are curious but have questions, just hit reply and drop me a line. : ) From a recent client: "I loved the work I did with Jocelyn in so many ways. I was navigating a tremendous amount of change and the work we did together allowed me to feel grounded, centered, and empowered. I felt like I was able to return to a wisdom and intuition that I knew was lying under the surface and was able to unlock a part of me that I did not have access to before." Learn more about what a session entails and book here. ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ |
SHOUT-OUTS:
The beautiful artwork is from: Pavel Mishkin, who is based in Lisbon, Portugal.
Link ideas from: Sebene Selassie and Dense Discovery.
You can support me & my work by: Participating in one of the offerings listed above, joining me for the next cycle of my creative incubator, KILN, or taking one of my courses.
Website: jkg.co
Twitter/X: @jkglei
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