Am I falling behind?
Bemoaning the fate that, at some stage, comes upon us all: the feeling that you’re falling behind everyone else.
Am I falling behind everyone else?
Should I be doing more, endlessly more?
Slow down, you’re doing fine.
Have I got a fount of unlocked potential that I could have been in pursuit of this whole time, if I hadn’t been too busy “living in the moment” to realise?
It’s not a race.
What is “the moment”?
Am I truly ever being totally present?
You’re living the dream, aren’t you?
Is my life dull in comparison to those around me?
All contestants my age, my category, all in the same race, and yet—somehow, impossibly, inconceivably—reaching that much further for things so far out of my reach.
It’s not a competition.
The travel influencer, the head of Public Affairs, the teacher, the artist, poet, writer, illustrator, business owner, wife, mother of one, two, three…
Look at how far you’ve come.
Yet, in this tumultuous, sucked-up-in-a-tornado-and-pulled-apart-by-the-seams fashion, I have pondered whether or not I need to rush or slow down. Denied this sense, this dreaded feeling that creeps up behind me when I am too busy
s l o w i n g d o w n
to notice its wretched hand arcing down over my shoulder. Like a weed that I do not recognise until it is fully realised, it sprouts beside all of the flowers I have so lovingly tended.
Trampling overgrown weeds, I wonder why I spent so long watering these flowers. The tall grass that clutches at my ankles, hoping to gain purchase, asks if the flowers—once bloomed—are what I had hoped for. If they are, why do I insist on writhing through weeds?
I, by degrees of increasing reed-ridden isolation, unknowingly shun my flowers. Whispering weeds in the breeze brush echoes and enshroud shadows until my calves are engulfed while the flowers bathe in a sun I cannot reach.
Put some perspective on the whole thing.
I walk and I walk and I walk until I am no longer in the garden. Climbing high enough to see the vista beyond the garden, to look down upon it. With this gained perspective, the weeds whose presence was once foreboding and formidable, lose significance.
Take yourself out of the equation.
Take yourself out of the equation.
In my acciptral impunity, I marvel at the garden. From here, I am withdrawn from the competition I once longed so desperately to win.
The artist, the influencer, and the teacher whose gardens I enviously admired now line up race.
In a contest I know I cannot now–or ever again–participate in, the influencer begins to rush by his flowers only to soon find himself slowed, wading through the grass—taller yet than even mine. The teacher, entrenched in weeds, starts to hack and slash and beat in a flurry of raging revolt while, unbeknownst to her, roots anew take place behind, beside, and all around. Finally, turning attention to the artist, I observe how flowers and weeds stand side-by-side in their garden. The artist lies there amongst it all, enshrouded almost entirely, embracing their fate. Not one competitor reaches the finish line first, if at all.
Who wins? For this, I have no jurisdiction.
I begin to wonder now if they, if I, were ever racing at all.
Where precisely were we aiming to finish this race? How can it be marked as ‘finished’ if their garden and mine look entirely different? If their race has different obstacles to mine?
I leave my pensive perch, leaving behind the ever-wading influencer, the violent revolt of the teacher, and the all-consumed artist.
I have seen all I need to know.
In this contest, there is no winner.
In my acquiescence, I learn I need not be confined within the incommodious garden, this fortress of self-deprecation and comparison in which I was once besieged.
No longer am I that woman all-consumed by weeds and flowers and tall grasses, deafened by the din. In this silent serenity, I hear the wisdom of former competitors whose innocuous beckons were left to wither and die at the boundary line. I hear them now:
You’ve got plenty of time.
There is no inherent need to rush.
No need to rush.
No need to be in keeping with this fruitless endeavour, this winnerless race.
No need to be in keeping with the rat race.
I’m in pursuit of that which a younger self could only dream of. I recognise her now as I meander contentedly, her visage bears alarming similarities, devoid only of that wearied countenance of a long-battling solider.
Occasionally, as I wander nearer to thickets and brush my hands along the tips of tall grass, I hear faint murmurations of that torturous one-sided war I longed to win.
So proud of you, baby.
It looks so good on you.
How’s your sister doing?
But as I begin to walk now, further and further away from subliminal whisperings of you’re not enough, I realise:
If I wanted, I could keep up with the Joneses.
If I wanted, I could be the creative, the suffering artist, the writer.
If I wanted, I could be the 9-to-5, the city woman who goes for cocktails and has dinner parties at her studio flat with cooler-than-thou, well-earning friends-who-aren’t-really-friends.
And, yes, I could.
I could. I could. I could.
I won’t. I won’t. I can’t.
For much too long, I steeped in this disquieted illusion of contentment.
As I pull my hand away from the grass, walk away from the thicket, and resume watching competitors exert themselves headlessly, I realise that my fulfilment is not in flowers.
Beyond the confines of a square allotment I had consigned myself unwittingly to, there comes into view the shaping of a hilly horizon that looks a lot to me like a fulfilled life.
Uncovered beyond that endless coppice is a once sheltered setting sun, unmarred by the grove in which my darker fears once dwelled.
And so, I will walk and walk and continue walking toward that hilly horizon.
I will resolve to continue along my own path.
Thanks for reading. The idea here was to use gardens as a metaphor for the successes of my peers.
Flowers being their wins, weeds being their struggles.
In observing the gardens of my ‘competitors,’ I was trying to convey how easy it is for us, at this age especially, to compare our lives with those around us. To find shame in not being as successful or happy or fulfilled. A recent revelation taught me that to take myself out of this headspace, this ‘incommodious garden’, means to remove yourself from this soul-sucking comparison competition we have all ascribed too much time to. In doing so, it also becomes clear that it is likely that everyone shares in this struggle (the ‘race’).
With the knowledge that my struggle is universal and ubiquitous, I found that there’s something really cool and freeing about being able to just step back, look at it from another angle, and think, “Actually, maybe I want no part of this. Maybe my life is good as it is and I don’t want to fit into the ‘square allotment’ that was designed for me by someone else’s hand.”
