When you don't have it
Dear Team Joy,
There are some weeks where I just don’t have it, whatever “it” may be. I can fight it, I can be mad about it, I can try to get myself to “do something,” but if I don’t have it, it’s probably not happening.
At the recommendation of a former client, I am reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It touches on a lot of the themes I have been writing about and experimenting with about slowing down and using our time well instead of just efficiently. There is a quote that has stuck with me.
It can’t be the case that you must do more than you can do.
It continues, “That notion doesn’t make any sense: if you truly don’t have time for everything you want to do, or feel you ought to do, or that others are badgering you to do, then well, you don’t have time - no matter how grave the consequences of failing to do it all might prove to be… You’ll do what you can, you won’t do what you can’t, and the tyrannical inner voice insisting that you must do everything is simply mistaken.”
I love this idea, that our inner tyrannical voices are simply mistaken. Like a kind accident, or a mildly unfortunate circumstance. It’s not a condemnation for trying to do it all or a chastisement for believing we have more capacity than we do.
Instead, Burkeman is gently asking us to admit our fundamental limitations. And while I can badger myself for having limitations, or feel angsty, guilty, and sincerely frustrated that they exist. I still can’t change the fact that they do, in fact, exist.
This week, I felt this heavily. I am currently in the process of withdrawing from steroids— a good thing overall because it means I am healthy enough to see if the Crohn’s medication I am on will work without the additional steroid support. But on the other hand, it leaves me feeling like a deflated balloon - and I am only one week into the taper.
I know this process will likely mean weeks of feeling exhausted, this week being only the first. So, as much as I hate to admit it, I will: this week I simply don’t have it.
We all inevitably go through days, weeks, sometimes seasons of not having it. Giving ourselves grace and gentleness can feel like the opposite of what we need - but sometimes its the only honest thing we can offer.
So, instead of badgering myself to write, as I go through steroid withdrawal fog, I wanted to share book recommendations of those who I know do have “it”. These books have comforted and inspired me on my own search for greater ease and meaning.
Much love,
Isabel