On asymptotic, uncomfortable striving
I had just written nearly 50 essays. I had maybe written 5 in the last year. I felt tremendously prolific and proud. I felt fulfilled for getting my thoughts and feelings out there on paper -- but I also somehow felt stubbornly dissatisfied.
I have an itch to scratch. A bone to pick. A chip on my shoulder. All of those.
But in particular, I have a desire to accomplish a lot. I want to reduce suffering. I want to write classics. I want to be a good family man to my wife and extended family of 100+ parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and more.
Yet I didn’t feel any less dissatisfied after my 50 essays. Writing is an important goal for me. To become a published writer who influences people is important to me. Yet I still felt stubbornly no closer to my goals even with that writing.
It never ends. No matter how many essays, no matter how much money earned, no many how many accolades received. The sense I have is yes, the journey is more important than the destination, and yes, many people have “success amnesia” where we forget milestones quickly and move on. But more specifically, we are always striving.
Paul Kalanithi in “When Breath Becomes Air” says:
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
I believe in that.
It is difficult for me because I want completion. I want to feel like something has been fulfilled. But by reorienting to see fulfillment as an asymptote rather than the crossing of a finite point an axis, I can align my expectations with reality.
This sense of restlessness and unsettledness, not having arrived, is something constantly underpinning my anxiety.
Bertrand Russell says:
“The working life of this man has the psychology of a hundred-yards race, but as the race upon which he is engaged is one whose only goal is the grave, the concentration, which is appropriate enough for a hundred yards, becomes in the end somewhat excessive.” and “It is very singular how little men seem to realise that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level. I am thinking, of course, of men in higher walks of business, men who already have a good income and could, if they chose, live on what they have. To do so would seem to them shameful, like deserting from the army in the face of the enemy, though if you ask them what public cause they are serving by their work, they will be at a loss to reply as soon as they have run through the platitudes to be found in the advertisements of the strenuous life.”
He also says, “To be happy, one first must not be unhappy.” Good point, Mr. Russell.