The Allure of Getting Things Done

Our intrinsic urge to do good in the world is the source of our proclivity to overindulge.
Despite the fact that our spirits are boundless, we inhabit restricted bodies and exist within the boundaries of a limited planet. On a daily basis, we experience the conflict between those two facts.
Our constant quest for balance between doing and being is a goal we strive for but never seem to realize.

The following is what a customer recently told me: “I don’t like my life, but I get a lot done.” He was well aware of the irony of his comment, but he seemed unable to do anything about it. With his tendency to overdo things, his capacity to get things done had become a sort of hungry, wild beast, consuming every other aspect of his existence that didn’t require doing: reading, relaxing, gazing at the skies, conversing with friends, and so forth.

Our lives seem to be determined by events outside of our control in so many aspects. In our lives, we make commitments to things such as pursuing an advanced degree, driving our children to ballet or soccer practice, or assisting a neighbor who is relocating to another state. It is then our responsibility to accept and live with the repercussions of our choices. 

We experience the stress of trying to squeeze in one more thing, the difficulty of being present to the things we once decided we wanted to do, and the ambivalence we feel at the conclusion of whatever project we initiated or for which we agreed to be responsible. We are not alone in feeling this way. Our first and most crucial question should be: “Does all of this work need to be done?” This is a very basic, yet critical inquiry.

For the most part, we are plagued by a pervading feeling that we are out of balance. We daydream about a hypothetical future, whether it be retirement, a vacation, or the day when our children are older and we will have more time to ourselves. We never seem to be able to achieve the enticing objective of perfect equilibrium, as if we are chasing a rainbow instead. It’s certainly not for more than a few short seconds at a time, at the most.

The abundance of self-help literature will propose methods to live your life in more balance, allowing you to take more pleasure in the present moment of your life, and allowing you to place more emphasis on the process rather than the result. Despite the fact that I have no objections to these works, I believe they fall short on certain levels because they do not adequately address the origins of this battle. 

What drives us to push ourselves to the brink of our abilities? For what reason do we consistently take on too much and get anxious as a result of our choices? Even if there are several tangible reasons for this, such as the imaginary lives our friends are living on social media or the very real and inevitably difficult labor of raising a family, I believe the explanation is more profound.

In my opinion, the most accurate description of the genesis of this battle can be found in a particular Jewish psychology authored by no one other than Freud or any of the other Jewish psychological giants, such as Adler, Fromm, or Maslow. The sort of psychology that is described by Jewish rabbis and mystics is what I’m talking about instead. This school of thought holds that we are infinite souls housed in limited bodies, living in a world that is, by definition, limited in every aspect. 

This means that in order for there to be anything as finite as a world, or a book, or a table, or the computer or phone on which you’re now reading this, God’s limitless light has to be restricted somehow in order to be contained in a vessel. And so we will always see ourselves as falling short of our expectations, no matter how hard we work or who our friends and family are. This is the essence of our reality: we have an intuitive sense of infinite, but we are continuously aware of our inadequacy in terms of reaching it in practice. It is in our fundamental nature to be divided into two groups.

The infinite soul, according to this same Jewish perspective, has descended into this limited body in order to bring good into the world in each and every one of us. As pure and loving spirits, we have a desire to do good in this world. We might have our motivation to do good skewed in a variety of ways, whether as a result of our upbringing or how the culture around us responds to our presence in its sphere of influence Nonetheless, our fundamental goodness exists, and therapy is ultimately concerned with reconnecting us to this source of fundamental goodness and our desire to do good in the world.

Religion’s ontological assumptions are something I admire yet sometimes find difficult to reconcile with my own beliefs. There will be no avoiding the truth about them, no hedging our bets by claiming, “oh, there are exceptions every now and again.” There are no exceptions to these thoughts: each and every one of us is a part of a bigger limitless light, and our goal is to bring as much of that light into the world as we possibly can, in our own unique manner, in order to benefit the whole human race.

 At the end of the day, this is why we bite off more than we can chew: not because we are neurotic, but because we are infinite beings attempting to express that infinity in a limited environment, with our limited bodies, and with our limited resources.

To return to my client, who expressed dissatisfaction with his life despite the fact that he does a great deal, I believe that the goal is to assist him in reconnecting to his fundamental goodness and desire to give of himself to the world. If he can come to know the reality of that fact, he will no longer feel the need to “do” in order to show he is worthy of love, but will instead feel the need to “do” because he himself is love. That one adjustment will fundamentally transform his life, enabling him to express his love in a more balanced way, since it will encompass both love of himself and love of the planet, as well as love of others.