Progress is two parts groundhog day, one part spinning in circles, one part…
I am stuck.
There’s so much paralysis by analysis. So many bricks are building up walls around me. Bricks made of everything I ever failed at (or, worse, didn’t even dare try), every poor behavior I haven’t yet broken free from, every time I recognized “Oh dear, here I am back in the same place again.” Many of the bricks are made of doubts about abilities, enthusiasm, or opportunities. The more those bricks build up, the thicker the walls feel around me. The more times I lay another brick, the more I think I must just be a bricklayer at heart, building my own prison around me.
It is human nature to want progress. And it’s human nature to define it poorly. What ‘progress’ means is more important than how it is achieved. I war with my mind about this on the regular.
“Progress is creating, building, and experiencing something that brings acclaim, adoration, or influence.”
“No, progress is internal. All you have is your mind. Progress must be centered in personal experience, independent of external results.”
“Progress brings the world to you.”
“No, progress brings yourself to the world.”
I have warring visions of adoring crowds and of isolation in nature.
Something just feels…missing. Or potential. Or unspoken.
Sometimes, I am a Ferrari at a red light. Sometimes, I am a Ferrari with an empty tank. Usually, I am a Ferrari going 30mph in a 25, which looks like journaling (again), planning a routine (again), re-working my schedule (again), recommitting myself to what I think I should be doing (again), all in hopes of changing my behaviors and my outcomes to align more with what I think is best for who I am inside. But then, who am I inside?
I think the problem is that we’re all race cars, but none of us are on the racetrack.
That’s actually not a great metaphor, so let me say it this way instead: We are humans whose bodies evolve so slowly we cannot comprehend it, but we live in a world that advances like lightning. The result is quite a mismatch.
Progress for the human soul is not the same as progress in the ever-changing world.
Read it again (I’m saying this to myself): Progress for the human soul is not the same as progress in the ever-changing world.
It is the human soul that wants me to be still, to accept what is, to live each experience as it arises, to understand that my life is miniscule but that I am part of a greater phenomenon of nature that spans millennia. This is the part of me that wants a tribe and a place in that tribe. It wants me to find fulfillment in achieving my small part of the greater whole— gathering water, building shelters, telling the stories of my ancestors, or whatever role I’ve been assigned to. It wants fewer choices and fewer opportunities but greater reliance on others and them on me. It wants the greatest joy to be sharing a good meal with family, or enjoying a moment in nature, or being awed by novel information or experiences. It wants to put myself aside for the greater good of humanity.
But the world is not this way. We do not need each other any longer. We are islands in so many ways. Instead of finding fulfillment in doing our own small part of a greater whole, we find fulfillment in how much we can be seen and ‘liked.’ The only success is global success. A good meal is par for the course, as we are surrounded by hyper-palatable, low-cost food and “snacks.” Enjoying a moment in nature is only worth it if it is photographed and shared…and admired by strangers who we secretly wish were not strangers at all. There is no more ability for true awe, as we are flooded with all the world’s wonders — superhuman traits, amazing feats of nature, larger-than-life biological anomalies, instant answers to all our questions (“Alexa, what is the weather today,” “Siri, what is the tallest mountain in the United States?”)— all day, every day, at our fingertips.
We are kings of a deserted realm.
We are King Haggard sitting alone in his tower, looking out over all the unicorns he has collected by force, but saying, in the end, “they have not made me happy.”
The advancing world was not made for our slowly-evolving minds and hearts. It has left us behind in so many ways, but it has dragged us along regardless.
So progress is groundhog day, yes. It is reminding myself over and over again that I cannot control the world but that I can always sit with myself. It is spinning in circles, yes. Like finding myself in the same ruts over and over again but only because the world presents paths that I compare myself to, paths that shouldn’t exist anyway.
The last part of progress, the part that really matters most, is hope. You cannot break down any brick walls if you don’t have hope. You may not even stand up to find out whether you can see over the wall at all. Bricks are just bricks. Even a hundred thousand of them cannot overcome human hope.
I hope that we humans will realize what we’ve gotten ourselves into and will band together, like we always have before (if you only zoom out to notice), to get ourselves back to progress with a deeper purpose. I would trade a world-full of shallow acknowledgements from usernames and profile pics for just a handful of real connections, a syndication of mutual reliance that provides us with our needs and gives back what we can offer, blooming and growing at nature’s pace and slowly changing the world for the better. Progress that fulfills both now and later.
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