Off the Grid: The curse of the goal-oriented

I have this patient who I often ask, “What is your goal?”

This may refer to healthy eating habits, improved lab markers, or any specific, measurable achievement of any sort. For two years now, they have stoically resisted any of my attempts to identify an end point, a thing toward which one may aim.

Somehow, they still manage to get out of bed every day and I am not really sure what for.

The only reason I get out of bed (particularly between Christmas and spring break) is because I have a lengthy list of goals and boxes to check off before I can get back into bed. As far as I understand, this is pretty much what being an adult is all about.

I have a half gallon of water to drink, a meditation to complete, 45 minutes (minimum) of outside exercise, a banjo to practice, pages to read. There is some personal growth journaling, some business development planning, and don’t forget the grocery shopping that meets the macro-nutrient goals. Because only women failing at life in general cannot hit their protein intake targets.

In my annual midlife crisis, which happens precisely on Feb. 12 at 18:47 most years, though sometimes it appears closer to 6 if my coffee is weak, I am suddenly overwhelmed at the realization that my life is lacking direction and purpose, despite having taken fish oil every day since the New Year.

On that day, I become acutely aware that nothing I have done and nothing I am planning on doing really has any merit at all.

Desperate to regain my footing on this planet so that I may feel justified in my use of its resources, I rather hysterically seek out a new goal.

Somewhere in my life it was made clear to me that doing things is how we make ourselves worthy of the air we breathe. Those with a more robust spiritual life may have expanded that learning to doing things for others.

In my upbringing of poverty and hard work, being busy was the only way you avoided not having more work. Even sickness was an inconvenience, so much that I daydreamed about visible injuries that would justify a modicum of sympathy. Even now, when overwhelmed and unable to say, “No, I cannot,” my mind wanders past the possibility of how long I’d be laid up if my leg broke.

(The answer is “not long,” because injured people are worse than aimless people, who are worse than hitchhikers who have their own car but just don’t want to use it.)

So when my patient returns and I ask what they want to do this year, seeing as it is February already, and they say, “That’s a good question …” like the days aren’t just ticking by furiously, I wonder if they’ve been secretly spending time in a Tibetan monastery.

“I don’t really like the stress of commitment or the possibility of failure,” they said.

I sat, mouth agape.

How did they liberate themselves from the incessant need to do things? Who told them that is OK?

And can I please have that person’s phone number? It’s probably His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I’ve been meaning to call him anyway.

In my winter crisis of self-actualization, during which I mark my calendar as if it might help me preempt the very same disaster next year (it never does), the doing also serves as a kind of antidote to the deep longing for hibernation. If I were not doing, all the pie I ate in the final quarter of the previous year would be serving as a buffering layer for a season-long nap.

As such, it just means I don’t have to zip my coat when I walk to the car.

Until the clouds of winter lift, which happens on another Tuesday in March or sometimes after a long weekend in Phoenix, I will proceed as usual: zealously purchasing from seed catalogs for the garden I plan on killing later this year and signing up for races.

Because, while failure and commitment don’t scare me, I’m terrified of rest, decaf and the possibility that simply being is enough.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com