I’m not sure where the sense of needing to be the best, needing to be responsible for it all, needing to ALWAYS get it right, needing to do everything alone, needing to do it ALL comes from.  WE can talk about pressures and distraction and how everyone is “on” all the time.  We can talk about how connected everyone is even though we’ve never been more disconnected from ourselves.  We can talk about survival and worth.  The thing is there has always been something innately in the human animal that makes us strive to be on top. Of course there’s the survival mechanism, that’s obvious, but this is more than that.  We set expectations on ourselves that no one could possibly attain and we get angry at ourselves if we don’t make it.  We act as if we are some all powerful being who should be above any type of human limitation.  I’m not talking fantasy world, I’m talking about the expectation that our calendars are filled and we somehow have to balance our schedule with our family’s lives all while looking cool, calm, collected, and leaving the smallest carbon footprint with our homegrown organic food and meal prepping and working out every single day and running multiple businesses because a single 9-5 doesn’t support us any longer and if we take any time off we’re falling behind. 

I found myself churning through some pretty disparaging and mean thoughts with increased frequency lately because it felt like I couldn’t get through the day.  I couldn’t complete a single task that I wanted no to. I struggled to keep my word to myself even for the things I WANTED to do.  I looked at my schedule and saw that there were a lot of conflicting things, there were some vague notes about what I had to do, lists of what should be done with no real task assigned.  Life felt chaotic and I was trying to do everything at once to keep us afloat.  I could barely find time to clean the house let alone create this free-flowing success living the dream all the time where everything is in its place and everyone plays their role.  I found myself constantly repeating how I should be able to do this.  I was the one who said yes, I started all this, I agreed to it, I even wanted some of it.  But I had no thoughtful or meaningful plan for execution and no clear goal in sight.  I know that’s a problem, however, I convinced myself that I was on top of it all and I found ways to push through and get it all done even if it meant giving up my sanity and the actual goal.  Which I did give up.  I don’t know what made me think I could do more than the average person or that I needed to.  I mean, I have an idea but that’s an entirely different piece.  I cried out asking for help, begging for a way to keep everything afloat, to get to the next piece of dry ground, frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get it together. 

I heard something tell me to stop apologizing for being human.  Nothing, no higher being had asked me to do all these things.  No higher being, no other person had said I needed to do all the work I’ve been trying to do.  No one said that I needed to say yes to everything.  No one said I needed to do all that work as some sort of penance.  No one said I needed to be super human and do it all.  None of us are held accountable to being more than human.  I don’t know when our culture deemed being human and expressing our humanity was a weakness as if we needed to be extraordinary at everything we do in order to be worthy.  There are thousands of moments and opportunities throughout the day that show us what a gift it is to simply be alive.  We’re the ones who decided the way to find meaning in life was to constantly do something.  I fully agree that we all need a purpose—but our purpose isn’t to do everything or to fill every single moment with doing something.  We need to recognize that humanity is nothing to apologize for.  If we were created to be a certain way then that is all we need to be.  It serves better to do what we are meant to do well rather than stretch ourselves to the breaking point doing everything half-assed and overwhelmed.  There’s a lot of life to live and we can’t regret who we are because we miss the boat on an impossible standard.  We have nothing to apologize for in regards to our capacity.  Our best is enough.