Don’t do anything. Those words came to me inbetween sleep during the night. They rang loud and clear and with a truth that silenced everything else. I saw a doorway, the door open and a scene revealed - the vision a metaphor for the potential and expression of everything.
We’re all of us fed, no, buried in the idea that we must be working on ourselves. It’s so persuasive, invasively taking over our thoughts and informing our actions. It’s the most devastatingly infectious dis-ease humans experience. We’re taught to be uneasy with ourselves almost from the moment we first draw breath. Soon after the shaping and person making begins, we toddle our way into fulfilling expectations, spoken and implied. If we’re not busy in our lives with the doings of self improvement, we’re escaping in a myriad of ways. We’re avoiding what we so wholeheartedly believe - that we’re not good enough, whole enough just as we are.
We’re raised into adulthood, having descended deeper into this project that’s our life, our notion of self. We’re now fully immersed in the illusion, defined by what we feel we’re not. Our minds are perpetually active with the business of measuring and improvement. We analyse and criticise; the fuel for the next new thing that we tell ourselves will make us feel enough. From this perspective, it’s a promise that will never be fulfilled. ‘This time, ‘ the mantra begins again, ‘it will be different.’
Broken promises lay on top of each other like a pile of bones inside our head. At times it’s just too much, we’re overwhelmed. We swing from the doings to the not doings, some of them masquerading as self care. The relaxation, holidays, time with friends or alone with the not enough self does nothing to address the lack we feel. In desperation we seek solace in religion, spirituality, beliefs and addictions - something, anything to fill what we perceive as the void within.
The truth is always simple though. When we give up the idea that anything outside ourselves will fill our need, the need and the desire to escape also disappears. Now we’re exactly who we always were - so much more than enough. Don’t do anything - the door is open.