On the subtle relief of narrowing our plans and ambition
Words by Madeleine Dore
I had a dream recently about a plane nose-diving from the sky. As it grew closer and the space between us narrowed, instead of feeling terror or fear, I felt this sense of awe and relief. Everything was ending, and I didn’t have to do anything.
The last couple of months have forced many of us to let go of plans, projects, ideas. We’ve collectively faced unexpected endings in various corners of our lives. For many of us, our lives have become narrowed.
In Melbourne, our daily lives are confined to a curfew, to an hour of exercise a day, to one shopping trip for essential items, to work and study from home, if we are able.
This narrowing can be disorienting and disruptive. It feels claustrophobic, even in my own privileged circumstances being able to work from home, to live alone, to be able to socially distance yet still find small pockets of connection with a phone, a walk.
Endings no doubt bring grief, but I’m also curious about the sense of relief that some endings and stopgaps can bring.
Perhaps it’s the relief of not having to make a decision anymore. There is no more FOBO – the fear of better options – because there are so few options. When an action or ending is outside our control, the fear of getting it wrong is diminished. It's no longer up to us: the decision has been made for us.
Whether an ending brings relief or grief also might have something to do with being comfortable with not-doing that accompanies it.
When it’s up to me to let go, my natural tendency is to work really, really hard to fill the space it leaves behind. This process further entangles me in what I’m trying to let go of – it’s like a pit I have been digging, only to tirelessly scoop the earth back in. When we spend our time simply filling an empty pit, we take a lot longer to reach new and steady grounds.
Environmentalist John Francis beautifully articulates the difficulty in letting go in his 2008 TED Talk. For decades, Francis was defined by his decision not to use motor vehicles out of respect for the earth and his decision not to speak. During his monumental, silent trek, he earned an MA in environmental studies and a PhD in land resources – but over time, he realised he had become imprisoned by these identify-defining choices.
“It took me 100 miles to figure out that, in my heart, in me, I had become a prisoner. I was a prisoner and I needed to escape. The prison that I was in was the fact that I did not drive or use motorised vehicles. Now how could that be? Because when I started, it seemed very appropriate to me not to use motorised vehicles. But the thing that was different was that every birthday, I asked myself about silence, but I never asked myself about my decision to just use my feet.”
We can make important changes in our lives, but often neglect checking in with ourselves to see if they still serve us. We become attached to our identities as morning people, or multi-hyphenates, or a certain profession, without asking ourselves if our circumstances still require the routine, the abstinence, the doing.
“I had no idea I was going to become a U.N. Ambassador. I had no idea I would have a Ph.D,” continues Francis. “And so I realised that I had a responsibility to more than just me, and that I was going to have to change. You know, we can do it. I was going to have to change.”
An ending can be frightening because it confronts our identity. Francis was afraid to change because he was used to the person he was – the person who only just walked.
“I was so used to that person that I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t know who I would be if I changed. But I know I needed to. I know I needed to change, because it would be the only way that I could be here today. And I know that a lot of times we find ourselves in this wonderful place where we’ve gotten to, but there’s another place for us to go. And we kind of have to leave behind the security of who we’ve become, and go to the place of who we are becoming.”
This space can be where we experience grief, too. But it’s always where we start anew, where we change.
“I want to encourage you to go to that next place, to let yourself out of any prison that you might find yourself in, as comfortable as it may be, because we have to do something now. We have to change now,” says Francis.
On making room for just one thing
Maybe an ending or a narrowing of our lives brings relief because it brings us closer to this idea of doing one thing well.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve prided myself on being someone who juggles various projects – I have enjoyed the rush of several to do lists, the calendar that’s always filled, and even the sense that I’m chasing my own tail brings a certain satisfaction.
In How Do We Know If We’re Doing It Right? Pandora Sykes writes: “When I moan about how busy I am, what I actually mean is that I have a lot that I should be doing..."
What this time of narrowing has helped me see clearly is that sometimes our doing, our complicated schedules, and our shoulds are of our own making. And it’s up to us let go – to embrace and end without doing anything.
Having my days narrowed externally has freed me to further narrow, to spot boundaries I was pushing so far out that I could no longer recognise them as my own important limits.
Ever since that dream of the plane taking a nosedive, I’ve been inspecting my shoulds and letting go ruthlessly. I’ve surveyed what I’ve been putting off and let it be a guide to stop adding something to my to do list. I’ve listened to what I don’t want, because sometimes the don’t-wants are more defined, they can be spotted and plucked from our days like weeds. That process isn’t always easy, and involves setting boundaries or shifting priorities, but by letting go of what you don’t want, you make space for what you do want to emerge.
I’ve narrowed my projects, my plans, even my ambitions – and it’s a great relief to let go, but there is still discomfort.
It’s uneasy to just be in the space this narrowing – external and internal – has created. Every day, I’m wrestling with feeling like I’m stagnating and becoming redundant, yet resisting the urge to fill the space with a myriad of projects again. I want to become versed at doing one thing well, to do less, to both narrow and deepen.
As Gary Keller writers, “You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.”
““Narrowing can feel claustrophobic, but reducing what we do can help to centre our focus and attention. It can help us take notice, it can be the nudge we need to enact the own endings we seek instead of waiting for them.” ”
Letting go is one part, being comfortable with doing less and being in the space is another. Narrowing is both limiting and spacious. We are creating direction for a mystery.
As John Francis said, “Part of the mystery of walking is that the destination is inside us and we really don't know when we arrive until we arrive.”
That’s the thing about endings, too. We don’t know it’s an end until it’s an end, but we have to keep creating space to build anew – be it our days, our wants, our identities, our ambitions.
But you don’t have to do anything to make this space; you don’t need to fill it. You can simply be in it, unsure for a while.
As dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille once said, “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
Narrowing can feel claustrophobic, but reducing what we do can help to centre our focus and attention. It can help us take notice, it can be the nudge we need to enact the own endings we seek instead of waiting for them.
We need empty, undesignated space so we can keep figuring it out, over and over, nosedive after nosedive, narrowing and narrowing, allowing ourselves to inch closer to the mystery, the awe and the relief of it all.