The Unreachable, Unbearable Standard

We’re only a few days out from the time of year when most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions. Some have even dubbed the second Friday of January, “Quitter’s Day.” It seems we have a penchant for setting the bar higher than we can actually reach. Some people see this and say we should just abandon the resolution process all together. Some say we should set more reasonable goals, or get rid of goals and focus on “intentions” or some other softer thing in the “goal” family. If we can’t achieve what we hoped for, we either need to lower the bar, or get rid of it, right?

But what happens when we can’t lower the bar, and we can’t reach it either? What happens when we all we can do is fail?

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

I’ve been wrestling with this idea a lot lately as I’ve felt my bar raise higher and higher. I want to live a life that treats every human with dignity and act from a place of care and concern for the environment. The more I learn about the subject, though, the more I have become aware of the raging inequality throughout the world and how every luxury I have in my own little personal existence has come at a great cost to someone (often many ones) on the other side of the world. Each fact about the mining of lithium and cobalt for the batteries in my smart phone or the farming and processing of coffee beans has raised the bar for how I want to live my life. I think it’s currently hovering about a thousand feet above my all time highest vertical leap.

I’ve spent the last several months chewing on how the adage of “do no harm” isn’t even remotely possible for a person living even a below-middle-class life in the west. Even doing less harm feels like trying to claw my way upstream in the middle of Niagara Falls. And that hasn’t stopped me from trying. I’ve ditched my car to ride bikes, I’ve cut out almost all animal products from my diet, I’ve canceled my Amazon Prime membership (and started it again, and cancelled it, and started it again, etc). And while these things have actually offered me an immense amount of joy and spiritual growth (more on that in a future post), I still fall woefully short of the kind of life I would hope to live. Despite my absolute best efforts, I am a failure.

I can already hear people who read this saying, “No, no, no, you’re not a failure! You’re trying and that’s what matters! You’ll get there eventually!” Maybe you’re thinking the same things, or something along those lines. I know I want to say them to myself when these feelings jump out and try to overwhelm me. But recently I’ve been slowing myself down enough to ask, “What’s wrong with being a failure?”

One of the things I’ve learned about the spiritual journey is that wherever we have the most resistance is where we will inevitably end up. As a young evangelical christian, I was adamant about finding myself on the “right” side of God’s judgement and did everything I could to be a “good” christian, even witnessing to random truckers at rural truck stops, and harassing each and every one of my friends to make sure they were “saved.” By the time I graduated high school I had “deconstructed my faith” (even though we didn’t call it that back then) and found myself on the receiving end of everything I had dished out to others. “You know this means you’re going to hell, right?”

As I review my life, I can see clearly how so much of my growth has been in times when I’ve been able to embrace something I had fervently avoided, and this is no exception. I don’t think anyone reading this wants to be a failure. I know I don’t want to be, but here I am, failing to live in alignment with my own values.

There seems to be only two ways of resolving this tension: change my values or accept my failures.

The thought of changing my values or “lowering my bar” seems reasonable at first blush. No one can expect to live that way, right? It’s just too much! Instead of a resolution, just set an intention! But when think about lowering my standards, it feels like wearing shoes that are a couple sizes to small. Sure, it works, but it comes at its own cost.

So, that leaves accepting my failures. Boy howdy does this one suck. But instead of the “shoes too tight” sort of feeling, the pain feels pure. Holy, even. Holding the tension between how I would want to live my life, and how I am currently able to live creates something in me that is nothing short of beautiful (and also, often very painful). It sets my sights on a goal so far fetched, it may not even be possible in my lifetime. But every step in the right direction becomes a victory in spite of its own immediate defeat. By seeing clearly how my actions cause direct and indirect harm to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people across the globe, while also holding onto the hope that I can do better tomorrow and that it’s possible for humanity to live in harmony with each other, I am allowing myself to live fully in the “messy middle.”

The more I embrace my failure, the more terms like failure and success seem to lose their meaning. Suddenly, I’m living more alive. And it’s not even that I’m “doing the best I can,” because honestly, there are plenty of days I am not. Sometimes I drive even though I could ride, I buy the junk food without looking at the ingredients, I buy that stupid plastic thing from that terrible company. I am a failure.

*AND*

I love my family and friends. I serve my community. I cut my carbon footprint. I am a success.

All of these things are true, and none of them negate the others. I am *BOTH* a failure *AND* a success, often all at the same time. I am *BOTH* a good person *AND* a horrible person, often all at the same time.

By holding the “both, and,” as Richard Rohr calls it, suddenly things like “good person” and “bad person” or “failure” and “success” become meaningless, or even better yet, irrelevant. Sure they may be operating on some level, but they aren’t affecting me, and that’s freedom.

So, I am holding onto my resolutions, and I’m keeping my bar sky-high. I am embracing how I fail, and not putting too much stock in how I succeed. Because, given the option, I’d rather be free than be successful.