The original version of this article was posted on a private blog shared with a dear friend, on April 23, 2023. I have revised it and reposted it here to capture a time in my life when I began to have an inkling of awareness regarding my “addiction to progress”. Eckhart Tolle said that “Awareness is the greatest agent for change”. While the awareness I had during the time of writing was certainly not sufficient for me to set boundaries on the militant part of myself that asked so much of my mind and body, it was a necessary first step.
There is a part of me, let’s call it Sisyphus, that doggedly insists of making my life hard in a myriad of ways. It wants to push boulders up hills for eternity for no good reason. Believing that Sisyphus’ demands have value without evidence, and proceeding to act on them without questioning them is so habitual, that I have become blind to the consistent result: all pain and no gain. But I’m tired, so tired. And at 0% I don’t have the capacity to push boulders up hills for eternity for no good reason.
Don’t worry friends, 0% is a rare place for me thankfully. Still feels a bit s**t though.
So I think I will let Sisyphus go. Not banish him or demonize him, he meant well. But I will relieve him of his assumed responsibility of futile hard work.
This may sound like I intend to do the impossible and achieve a major mental shift over night. Something that takes years of therapy/reflection/journaling/inner work and such. But I have learned an invaluable lesson in the last few months. And that is that a) no thought or feeling can make you do anything you don’t want to do – they are powerless, b) all thoughts and feelings will rise and dissipate if you stand back, observe them from a distance and let them – they are transient and c) you have an innate wisdom, a true self who knows what the right thing to do at any given time, you just need to ground yourself from the thunderstorm of the aforementioned thoughts and feelings to connect with it.
All that is to say, that actually, I can make a mental shift overnight, I just need to name and recognize Sisyphus as another powerless and transient collection of thoughts that I can choose to let dissipate instead of engaging with, or indeed, acting on.
My Sisyphus doesn’t look so muscular. She’s a bit of a weakling actually. She’s tired, hungry, overtrained, underslept, stressed out. She is too thin. She restricts her calories and tracks her weight. She doesn’t eat when she is hungry and ruminates if she eats when she is not. She works too late.
My Sisyphus does not represent how I feel most of the time, but she is a part of me that becomes more representative of me if I allow her to.
I just want to order fries and a beer with my (veggie) burger if that’s what I feel like. To drive to dance instead of cycling if I feel like it. To throw out my scales. To eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. To have an early night date with my bed if I feel tired. To get out of work by 6 to go dancing.
Ahhhh. I’m so done with this boulder.
x A
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