Procrastination Post

It occurs to me that people are wrong when they scoff at our fear of failing and recommend we "just" stop caring what others think. They are wrong because what others think is not why we fear failing: solely or even mainly. Not every emotion is a social emotion. I for one fear failing because failing makes me feel powerless and vulnerable. Which feels awful. Which I don't like. Saying I fear failing is like saying I fear tooth extractions without an anaesthetic. Yes. I do.

What's more, sitting quietly with powerlessness and vulnerability, I realise it's the same pain in many places: when I sit down to write this policy and procedure for supervision, which needs to happen today, when I think about writing this blog post, when I miss people. It's the same everywhere: the pain of powerlessness and vulnerability. I hurt because where do I even begin to write this policy; hurt because hearing where this sentence screeches out of satisfying tune with superfluity and slop is not enough to know how to make it better; and hurt because I can't control people and have to be vulnerable to the ones I like. Truly, who cares what people think? There's plenty to hurt about regardless.

Diagnoses matter because each suggests a different medicine. The diagnosis that fear of failing is caused by your need of approval implies the solution is to suppress that need. (Or whatever it is that people mean by "caring less about what people think".) But in so far as the fear of failing is not caused by needing approval, needing it less won't help.

So here are my solutions.

One is mindfulness. We're all migrants through time, says Mohsin Hamid, and so we are. You move towards the future like the pilgrim through a black forest. It helps to keep your eyes open. Call it something like this: sincere self-awareness. Know, be honest with yourself about, your limitations, be aware of what hurts when and how much, remember what feels OK and what doesn't, and then choose.. intelligently. Intelligence means this: new moment, new decision. Compute afresh. By all means, draw on experience, but remember also that right now is like nothing you've experienced already. Don't suffer sufferings that belong to the past. Don't confuse fear with anger. Don't try to still time. It's OK to have no idea how to write a policy and procedure for supervision, especially when that's a key part of your business strategy. What small person wouldn't procrastinate entering the arena with a dragon? It's OK, stop, breathe. And then enter the arena anyway.

Two is curiosity. You're useless, but you're not entirely useless. And sometimes a little bit of usefulness can go a long way. Look a bit closer, is what I mean. Aesthetics terrifies me far more than judgement does, because while it's hard to face being wrong, it's much harder to face being ugly. The wrong have their tribes, at least; there's few if any tribes for the ugly. Physical ugliness, spiritual ugliness, ugliness of style. They are deadly. When I like someone's style, I can put up with their wrongness (is how I kept all my Brexit-voting friends); but when their style makes me shudder, reason alone bounds my cruelty. Hence this unique horror that I feel when I fail to transcend ugly writing. Hence why caring less about the thoughts of others is useless here: it's my own shuddering, before my own ugliness, that makes me want to crawl out of my skin and incinerate the leftovers to limit infection. "Self-hatred" as a concept kind of misses the point, I reckon: it's self-disgust that's the real killer, that movement in which the mind puts itself in the same category as a rotting rodent. Self-disgust is the auto-immune disease of the soul. But there is a way to stop it, or at least make it more discernible: be curious. Isn't there a baby in this bathwater? Can't we find something to keep. Collect the bits that are worth keeping, even a little, and pin them to a wall. You only need to be a little bit beautiful.

Third is, sadness. Some things you really can't help. The world contains love and pain both and doors will let both in with equal efficiency. Still, you need doors. Doorless dwellings are tombs and useless. I really, really hate feeling vulnerable. But as luck will have it, the opposite of vulnerability is not safety. It's loneliness. So you're still looking at the lesser of two evils.

Of course, some days I feel like doing none of the above and just kick and drink. That works too.

But then I come back, because there's water all the way up, and what else is there but to do what the Romans do, divide and conquer. I opened the policy document and wrote "X must supervise Y". Already, the next step is a little clearer.

(Close cat video.)