Minor Epiphanies 1.9
On embodying a living statue
By this point, I’ve been planning a Substack article on “women and front-page news” for WEEKS. I brainstormed this idea ages ago, started the article, and swiftly decided I needed to do more research. I started writing again, declared I knew nothing, and dove back into the research, and so on. Welcome to my brain.
For me, the cycle of attempt, insecurity, and research is a common one, favouring insecurity and research while minimizing attempt and — the entire point — execution.
I think most of us inhabit some version of this cycle. From “I’ll be happy when I look this way” to “I’ll be successful when I have this number in my bank account,” we outsource our sense of security on a future outcome. Until recently, I didn’t realize my version of this is bound up in both procrastination and imposter syndrome:
I’ll be ready when I have a fourth degree.
I’ll be ready to rewrite my novel when I’m an expert on the sociocultural details of the late 1940s.
I’ll be ready to conceive once I understand everything about fertility and I’ve boosted my fertility with major and minor lifestyle changes.
The absurdity in this way of thinking smacks me in the soul when I write it down. The rigidity! The perfectionism! The lack of fluidity and life force! Of course, research is often necessary and extremely helpful, and I’m not suggesting some Elizabeth Holmes-esque approach. But if I spend all of my time researching, training, and preparing, what is the point?
Many of Anne Lamott’s quotations leave me feeling startled and naked, and right now, it’s this one:
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.
I’ve spent a lot of time halted, plotting how I’ll strike each stepping-stone. By believing that the perfect angle, force, and intention will keep me safe, I believe that I’ll maintain control and arrive at the exact circumstances I want. And if I plan enough and pack a life raft, the fall won’t hurt as much. And do you know what? By focusing on preparation, I’ve missed the entire point. The point, after all, isn’t to second-guess and research (which isn’t really research at a certain point, but morphs into doubts rattling around Google). The point is to focus on the needle-movers and the “juice” of life.
To be fair to myself, I’ve run full steam ahead on a number of occasions, and these were some of the most rewarding steps I’ve taken. Some of my best work was submitted well before I felt ready to share, and I lived in a handful of places without overanalyzing beforehand. Even in my daily life, there are many tasks and projects I execute without second-guessing. However, as noted above, some of the projects I’m most excited about get swept into that dizzying cycle.
Ironically, I reached this epiphany while doing research. In the March 7, 1947 copy of The Sheaf, a newspaper based at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. V. C. Fowke wrote an article titled “The Function of a University.” The article highlighted “the preparation-for-life element” at universities:
Peace-time universities are bedevilled by fully grown but permanently immature young men and women who frolic about the campus waiting for life to begin. They have been told that they must prepare for life. By the time they have spent twenty years in activities pictured to them as merely preparation they are ill-fitted for anything but further preparation.
University personnel find genuine pleasure in working with veterans and attribute this pleasure to the greater maturity of returned men and women. . . . The essential point, however, is not that the veteran is six or eight years older than the usual university student, but that he no longer has any nonsense in his mind about ‘preparing for life.’ He knows, in pungent idiom, that ‘this is it,’ and has been for a long time. He knows that he is not preparing for life, but living it, and that the job he has is here and now, not tomorrow.
Although I haven’t been in university for years, I’m admittedly still frozen in preparation in some areas of my life. Instead of being an active, engaged, risk-taking writer (or eventual mother, for that matter), I’ve embodied a “living statue,” perched motionless on the brink of life without realizing “this is it” and that I have arrived and that I am ready. Fortunately, living statues “occasionally come to life to comic or startling effect.” I’m coming to life, and I’m ready to have a little more fun running across those stepping-stones.
This Minor Epiphany recommends:
“Ahead by a Century” by The Tragically Hip, specifically for the lyrics: “No dress rehearsal / This is our life.”
You can find Dr. V. C. Fowke’s article here.
Gorgeous insights. To feel “startled and naked” -- a gift. Loved all of this.