“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
-African proverb
Here’s to the one who still, despite all of the trappings of the good life, feels never enough.
You were in school and then college and then grad school (perhaps) and then you got married and had your kids. Career success. Six figures, perhaps.
And, yet, still that niggling sensation — not enough.
Now, you look back and it can seem, almost, that it was sort of a race. But where were you going? You are out of breath, but still, somehow, in the same place.
And still that niggling sensation — not enough.
So we made more goals and we made more markers and we made more benchmarks.
And still — not enough.
So we looked at other people who seemed to have it all, or who seemed to be content. We had no clue what we wanted, truly. And if they found something that led to their contentment, then we ought to have that something too. That’s only fair. So, we made their goals our goals and we made their markers our own and we looked at their benchmarks and set ours one inch higher and met those too.
Yet, still, that niggling sensation — not enough.
And so we wished that others had less and we harbored thoughts of their failure. We made competitors out of friends just to prove that we had more, could always have more. We became grief-stricken with an envy we could not even allow ourselves to feel or perceive.
If I have nothing, then she must have everything. Therefore, I must make sure that she has less. And so we put our energy into forcing this reality, because perhaps we could feel enough by feeling that others had less.
Perhaps we could really feel settled. Really feel OK. If we were convinced that others had less. Perhaps we could only feel OK, if we had more than others. Not enough to have it all. No, only enough to have more. What’s all if someone else has more?
And so balm to our ever-present emptiness, we destroyed friendships and destroyed others and destroyed connection through our thoughts, through our actions, through our omissions.
So now, we had everything we thought we needed. We had everything and even more. And we had thoughts that others would have nothing. And so we had more than them too, we thought.
And still — not enough.
There’s an African proverb that goes “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
There are communities I have experienced in which the point of the day was not to reach nor to strive nor to race. The point of the day was to rest and enjoy and work, honestly. The point of the day was to, perhaps, take a pause and then maybe go to your neighbor’s home some kilometers away and say hello. Recall shared memories. To sit, without expectation. To connect, without the aching sensation of needing to compare. To see clearly those around you who make the good life possible, in its truest form.
You who are reaching for the next success, you whose reaching has curdled into a belief of the need for reckless competition, a belief that others have what you need and therefore they must have less.
Consider: you have gone too fast to go very far.
You have gone too fast to see clearly anyone around you. You have missed the opportunities to listen, to learn, to experience, fully. You have traded connection for the trappings of the good life.
And yet, you have forgotten. The stories in the crevices that reveal it that it was, in actuality, going together that has sustained you. Not winning. Not success. Not living the right kind of life.
The shoulders of giants on which you stood. The people who listened and made you feel, momentarily, worthy. The loving thoughts sent by others from spatial distance. The soft clarity of the wind. The amber tenderness of the sun.
Now you have tried everything. And now it is still not enough. Perhaps, now, you will try something different.
Or perhaps you will go, alone.
