The art of not quite getting there

Instead of ‘existing in anxiety’, Lucía Martínez Alcalde celebrates the freedom of incompleteness. 

“And how do you manage to get everything done?” I have had to answer this question frequently for almost as long as I can remember. Back in my college days, the answer used to be, “I don’t sleep much”. But, since sleep is important – and age is unforgiving – the answer for a few years now has been: “I don’t”. The truth is that I have never quite ‘got there’, neither with three hours of sleep nor with ten.

And that’s the first point: “You’re not going to get to everything done.” A hard-working person (at home or outside, or both), with numerous concerns, with friends, with a tendency to ‘get involved’ in all sorts of exciting projects can’t get to everything. By definition. And if you throw a family into the mix, this only adds to the excitement. 

The first step is to accept this. And then remember it, because, when that truth disappears from our heads, tensions and stress can overcome us. Accepting that the day has twenty-four hours and that we are limited beings, and not Superman or Wonder Woman, is easier said than done. 

But it is a healthy realisation and we must aim towards it, so we can say that “I don’t get to everything” with ever less sadness-anxiety-unfounded-and-meaningless-sense-of guilt and ever more peace-joy-acceptance-serenity. 

Between The Art of Doing Nothing (those who decide to live life at the minimum, without dreams, without ambition, without going beyond themselves) and The Art of Doing Everything (tricked by that story they’ve tried to sell us, “You can have it all, you just have to dream it”), I think the middle ground is The Art of Not Getting to Everything. And that precisely is the title I’ve given to my fourth book (though I regret that at present it is only in Spanish: I haven’t quite ‘got to’ translating it into English!). 

Dreaming big, undertaking projects, committing yourself… without falling into exhaustion, frustration or disenchantment.

There are no recipes for this. Because living, deep down, is an art, for which the virtue of prudence is essential, which helps to discern at all times how to harmonize the desire for more with our human limitations. 

Each one must start looking for a way to live that tension, especially when the balance tilts on the side of wanting to cover a lot and but in fact only managing a little, and then losing our peace and joy. 

Sometimes it is a question of adjusting our expectations. This requires a fearless look at reality (our own and that around us). But adjusting expectations is not shrinking. Realism should not go hand in hand with pessimism, nor with a vision of prudence misunderstood as not taking risks. We dream and work and we keep dreaming. 

 

And, along the way, we learn how to stop those dreams from turning into nightmares which weigh us down, frustrate us, and become an accusing finger that says: “You haven’t achieved this, therefore you’re worthless.” 

This fearless gaze helps us not to suffer excessively when we come up against the reality of our circumstances and our limitations. “The finitude that fears itself is to blame for making us anxious,” writes Romano Guardini. But, he argues, “existing in anxiety” does not have to be the only possibility for the human being: “we can also exist in courage and trust.” 

He also explains that recognizing one’s limitations and respecting them does not mean renouncing the aspiration to grow, and he warns against resentment: “That attitude which reveals I have not really accepted myself […], the attitude which consists in bad-mouthing what I have not managed to do” (Romano Guardini, Accepting Oneself). 

When the dreams and plans which bubble in our heads and hearts begin to overwhelm us because they collide with our frailty, with the limits of time and space or our own (in)capacity, and with all the other duties we are already committed to… the solution is not to think “I stop dreaming to avoid disappointment”, like someone saying “I stop loving to stop suffering”. 

Yet, on the other hand, happiness does not lie in doing a thousand things, but in doing what you really want to do, what is most important; and to do it conscientiously, and enjoy it. 

Big dreams, small dreams 

Sometimes, dissatisfaction bites us at the level of our projects, at the most concrete and material level, but, other times, the bittersweet aftertaste goes deeper. 

The projects we undertake are the steps we take in response to our desires, which are what propel us in a certain direction. 

The problem is not in dreaming big. That kind of permanent dissatisfaction can be a problem if it leads to a lack of commitment, lack of concentration, always going after the newest and getting carried away by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). 

But I ask myself if, deep down, that dissatisfaction and desire for more could not be a reminder that we are finite but also immortal, made for eternity. And if there might not be a way to live this tension in a more serene way. 

Genuine longings must be distinguished from created needs (or often just whims), imposed from outside or not, like little dreams. “What that person has… and I don’t. What I see everyone on social media is doing… and I am not. What the other has achieved… and I haven’t.” 

There are so many inputs we receive on a daily basis that it is important to sift through our desires, to distinguish the true ones from those we have inherited and assumed without filter. 

I was thinking about all these things when I read an interview with Erik Varden in which he explained the difference between longing and desire: 

“Desire is rooted in me, I am its subject. When I say, “I want a glass of wine,” it’s because I want to drink it, because there’s something in me that craves it. On the other hand, when I say, “I long to go home,” it’s because everything I consider home appeals to me, calls to me. […] A person’s longing tells us a lot about them; In fact, our longing reveals to ourselves who we are. So a question I often ask people who feel trapped in their lives is, ‘What are you longing for?’“ (Erik Varden: “I always remember this advice: don’t be fascinated by evil”, Daniel Capó, The Objective, 9/10/2021) 

If this is so (and I believe it is), how are we going to silence our longings? And should we even try? For how are you going to grow, to mature, without cynicism, without lukewarmness, without conformism, without manias, without sorrow, if we don’t foster big dreams, strong desires? 

I was talking about this with my brother Álvaro one summer morning, in the garden, with the August sun rising, the white roses which cover part of the wall in their splendor, and the smell of lavender which came and went as the wind blew. 

“With creativity”, he said. And I answered straight back: “And love is creative, so… with creativity and love. Although the first and most at hand thing I can change is myself. But this does not imply giving up on wanting to change the world. And accepting that this will bring its tensions… But the opposite position – accommodating oneself in small dreams – leads to inner rheumatism.” 

The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his classic work Man’s Search for Meaning states: 

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

The goal is not to live comfortably. The peace we seek in our depths is not the silence or stiffness of the tomb, but the flexibility of dancing life, which is always in motion.

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