#4 The Linear Trap
A linear definition of progress and achievement is a farce.
If it feels like the world is on fire, I think it’s fair to say that it is. If you can, please donate to the organizations that are supporting the Ukrainian people on the ground. I’ve personally donated to Save the Children and Together Rising, as well as Sarah LaFleur’s IRC fundraiser on IG.
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Ever since I jumped off the “career track” I have been fighting against a linear concept of time and success. I’ve discovered that this linear progression is embedded in all areas of life, work, and narratives of our human experience.
A career “track” means you’re either on it and moving forward in a linear progression, or you’re “off” of it, meandering on your own, in the unknown. When someone asks, what’s your story? We talk about how we grew up at point A, then went to school at point B, and then moved to point C, and then did this job at point D, etc. We take on new diet and exercise regimes or develop productivity habits where we start on day 1, repeat on day 2, and success is measured by whether or not we continue on days 3, 4, 5, and so on.
A linear conception of time, progress, and success is embedded deep in our psyche and language. It is woven into how we organize our lives, communicate worth, and participate in society.
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to Glennon Doyle speak candidly about an eating disorder relapse that she is still continuing to muddle through. She describes it not as a sudden occurrence but rather, a gradual succumbing over the last two years. And when she asks herself why she didn’t ask for help earlier, she explains:
[T]here’s this weird sobriety rule that like, we’re supposed to gather days, like how many days you’ve been sober or how many years you’ve been sober, is a badge of honor. That is your achievement in sobriety. It’s like your validity. It’s your validity. It’s your worth. It’s your bank account. […] [T]he cost of raising my hand and getting help was going to cost me 20 years. I had to turn in my 20 year token in order to raise my hand and get help. The cost of getting my sobriety back was abandoning all of my sobriety.
This was heartbreaking to me. This linear concept of progress and success is embedded into sobriety culture such that asking for help to get her sobriety back equals abandoning all of her 20 years of sobriety. How could that be?
I wonder, How many people are trapped by this linear concept of progress? How many of us stay in jobs or careers while juggling unmanageable demands of caregiving out of fear that they will lose all their years of education and achievement? How many people like Glennon fail to get the help when they need it because that means you would have to begin again? How many of us deny ourselves what we really need and want because we think we will lose our sense of achievement if we skip a day, a week, or a year?
When CVs, résumés and LinkedIn profiles require a linear narrative of our story, it is no wonder that we feel compelled to tuck away our roles as mothers, fathers and caregivers into a one-liner in the footer, next to our niche hobbies. These roles aren’t neat data points on our line graph of personal and professional achievements.
And there is nothing more anti-linear than caring for young children. Whether it’s getting them to sleep through the night, or simply meeting their autocratic snack demands, there is very little linear sense of progress except in the one metric that undeniably breaks my heart a little: they get bigger everyday.
The more I pay attention, the more I see this linear trap in my life and out in the world and I have an inkling that we could replace it with something better, truer, and more human. For now, I’m crowdsourcing all the ways that the concept of linear progress and achievement shows up. Do you see it showing up in your life? Share in the comments.
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Regarding grief and physical recovery from something like surgery, we talk about a corkscrew rather than linear progression. There is movement and change, but movement in different directions and at different speeds depending on the day. With career and family life, perhaps the thing we circle back around to - sometimes closer, sometimes further - are things like our values and true nature/self.
Totally agree. Change - and progress - are spirals.