June 2, 2025
NEEDS MUST
“We are often blind to how much we are changing. The psychologist Daniel Gilbert has a famous saying about this: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.” We are also often blind to the fact that a change in life circumstance often requires a renovation of our entire consciousness. As Carl Jung put it: “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” (David Brooks How to Know a Person)
The above quote was to be the theme for this week. What follows is the first thing I wrote this morning:
I’m in panic mode about having to both write my blog and entertain company this evening. Not “having to”, wanting to. I register a marked change in my confidence to entertain. Even though I bought all this food, I worried that I wouldn’t have time to cook it. Or that I wouldn’t have enough, after all, to serve to company. Or why I reneged on my original idea and asked the others to bring things. Well I’ll do my light invocation — let go and let God.”
So it was that I headed out to drive my grandson to school; my head spinning with things to do, and a body jangling with high nervous agitation. To add to the confusion I opted for an unfamiliar pool, where I missed the memo about circle swimming (vs going side by side) and swam into the swimmer with whom I was meant to be sharing the lane. He was not impressed. Curtly cited the rules and huffily carried on his way. This almost drove me out of the pool after only completing a fraction of my swim. It took great fortitude to JUST PLOW ON. Throughout the swim I endured an incessant dialogue between my maniacal roommate and the calm, capable person I wish to embody.
By the time I’d finished my laps I was still trying to problem-solve a problem that was mostly in my head. Ironically, everything was in hand but for the “me” who was caught in a vortex of panic, which drove me to the grocery store, where I doubled down on the amount of food I’d planned to serve, and came home laden with more groceries than I knew what do do with, and more ambitious plans than I had time to execute. And this doesn’t include the things I asked the others to bring when I woke in that state of high anxiety.
Can you tell I haven’t entertained in a while?
Somewhat belatedly, Brooks’s message hits home: “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning…” If yesterday’s shopping spree at the farmer’s market represented life’s morning, by the time I registered what I’d bitten off it was —figuratively speaking — very late in the day! The irony is that my cleaning lady just came to my aid, and while I scramble to order my thoughts in this blog, a Mexican chicken casserole is materializing in the kitchen. With marginal help from me.
Let go and let God, indeed.
My point is that, so long as I am ruled by an old personality aspect that thinks I’m no longer “up to” whatever I feel inspired to do, I will compound the actual effort required to finish it with the stress of self-doubt and second-guessing.
Brooks expands on his theme with:
“Periods of transition between tasks can be rough. When you’re locked in a task, you’re embedded in a certain mindset. When that mindset stops working for you, you have to let it crumble inside you. “All growth is costly,” Kegan writes. “It involves leaving behind an old way of being in the world.”
The “old way” that I want to leave behind is the conditioned ego that thinks it’s all up to me, that I am a solitary entity who is independent from the world around me. Being able to surrender this overarching sense of responsibility allows other people to help me. Together we create a sense of collaboration and community. Together we shoulder the burdens of defeat, the joys of achievement, and the work of learning to live through transitions with grace and grit.
Or collectively vow never to entertain again…🤔