Big Moves

Useful, not true

The astute observers among you will have noted that my 30-day essay challenge ended at a number that was not 30. Good news: it’s not because I was kidnapped by pirates or killed by the plague. It was a measured decision, one which I’d like to explore against the broader dynamics of this whole thing.

When we observe a meaningful gap between where we are and where we’d like to be, it’s tempting to take on a grand, dramatic endeavor aimed at closing that gap—a Big Move. A drastic diet; a cross-continental move; a religious conversion. The weight of our dissatisfaction convinces us that small steps won’t do. We believe we need something big to provide enough propulsion to clear the gap.  

The reason these grand endeavors are so alluring is that they appear to offer an identity-level transformation. Small measures must be carried out by the person we are today, but a Big Move promises to turn us into someone new—someone on the other side of the gap.

I don’t think this is inherently good or bad. Big Moves can be very effective. Like most things, their efficacy hinges on the axes of awareness and intentionality. If we take a moment when we first feel the desire to make a Big Move to investigate where the desire is coming from and the implications for day-to-day life once the dopaminergic honeymoon has passed, we’re much more suited to make a good decision on whether a Big Move is the right move. 

Which brings us to my 30-day challenge. Last month I found myself in a writing rut, a tangled mess of perfectionism and inertia that kept me from finishing anything. That familiar magnetism toward a Big Move—in this case, the 30-day challenge—began to bubble up. I ran some diagnostics, and everything looked good. The intent came from a healthy place, and having done 30 consecutive days of publishing before, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. Green light. 

The challenge went better than I could’ve imagined. The perfectionism disappeared in short order, and to my surprise, I wrote some pretty strong pieces. I also ended up writing a ridiculously long series that had, unbeknownst to me, been begging to be written. All told, the whole thing was a smashing success.

But that success came more quickly than I had anticipated. I found myself with a full two weeks left in the daily publishing bonanza with no real reason to keep it going. Each day, with increasing intensity, a battle was fought between a part of me that felt a need to follow through with the full 30 days because I said I was going to and a part of me that thought it was pointless. 

The former won the battle each day until day 26. On that day, I woke up as sick as I had been in years, which rendered me less inclined to fight the battle. I spoke with a friend about my dilemma, and he wisely reminded me of some counsel I had recently given another friend of ours: you are well within your rights to break your own rules when they are no longer serving you.

My own rule—that I would publish every day for 30 days—was no longer serving me. In fact, it was doing the opposite. I was beginning to dread the daily publication. The only thing that kept me going was one of those insidious ‘shoulds’, a vague sense of responsibility that was really just a thinly-veiled expression of ego and external projection. 

A theme that has been coming up often in my life is the idea of ‘useful, not true’: that, because there are so few things that we can definitively say are capital-T True, it might be best to evaluate our beliefs through the lens of their utility, not their accuracy. Put another way, it’s a reminder that everything is made up—our structures, our institutions, the way that we govern ourselves and our societies, and so on. It’s a reminder that the world and the way we live in it is malleable. 

All of this is to say that we can and should change our minds, our beliefs, and our ways of living if they cease to serve their intended aim. The thing that keeps us from doing so is a fabricated, imaginary self-image that masquerades as virtue. Whether we’re considering making a Big Move, continuing or pivoting away from a Big Move, or just a general heuristic that has governed our lives, what matters is not how it all fits into the arbitrary rules or self-projections that we’ve created in the past, but whether it’s useful in the context of our life as it is today.