“I feel like whenever I accomplish something important I’m immediately anxious – like, with a feeling of having no direction.”
What are some of the questions you ask yourself when you accomplish something?
“What’s next? Was it really such a great goal? Who cares?”
It’s that last question, I believe, that goes to status and raises some interesting questions. Somewhere between where most Americans are and a nirvana of unattachment, probably, there is a waystation at which we can ask goodfaith questions about actual rewards.
Most of what is done under the auspices of self-satisfaction is not.
Eighteen years and a hundred pounds ago, I completed the Portland Marathon – all 26.2 miles of it. Ostensibly I did it for myself. But I recall vividly wondering sometime in the painful evening that followed my feat: Whither this new status as a person who completed a marathon?
I donned my FINISHER t-shirt and walked along the river the following afternoon and collected, for the first and last time, really, nods from serious runners: You’re one of us.
Within a few years my body had returned to a more comfortable weight and I’d ceased with the misery of running. All that remained of a thousand hours of training was a framed photo.
Gazing upon that photo today brings no emotion. I hardly recognize the lad in the frame and remember nighnil of the event.
This strikes me as a decent development. I’m sure even the lad who trained all those hours – or perhaps especially that kid – would’ve felt vicarious embarrassment for a future self who, two decades on, still bored passersby with news of his achievement.
It’s a question worth asking of ourselves before setting any goal we tell ourselves is really about self-satisfaction: What if I’m the only one who’ll ever know I did this?
If this leads to less achievement and subsequently less anxiety, why, what will be lost in such self-acceptance?