All or nothing thinking

When I was younger, my mother started making changes to her life. Not little changes, either. Huge sweeping changes, like divorcing my father or moving half way across the country and changing careers. Dad told me that it was 'All or nothing' thinking, that mom would decide that she was unhappy, and the only solution was to change everything.

Was he bitter? probably. I do need to take what he said with a grain of salt. But the principle has stuck with me, and I've always been worried when I start to change things in my life. Am I just depressed and trying to change everything, or is there real reason to do it?


You may have noticed, I've been on vacation for a few weeks. I got to have a real vacation, that great time when you can just let go of everything, where you don't need anything pressing down on you. That's really what true vacations are, for me at least: a relief of pressure. The pressure of life, the imagined pressure of what others expect of me, and the pressure my deranged mind puts on me at every step of every journey.

Once the pressure is released, I can be me. It's been a long time since I was me. It was nice to see me. We got reacquainted a little bit, and it turns out we get along pretty well, even still. So I invited me to come back from vacation.

But it doesn't work like that. Once the vacation was over, once I was back in my life, the pressure picked back up. Suddenly me was making excuses and looking for the door. I don't want me to go, so I have to do what I can to keep me here.

Which brings me back to all-or-nothing. I'm not going to keep all of what I was on my vacation. Me isn't moving in and taking over. But that doesn't mean that me is heading back out, and I'll never see me again. He may not move in, but I can at least let him redecorate a little.

The person I get to be when all the pressure is gone is like water. I can't hold him. He conforms to the size of his container, and with the pressure, that container is pretty small. So I need to work to stretch my container, just a little bit. Break some old routines. Build new habits. Maybe it'll only last a few weeks, maybe it'll last forever. Probably, it'll be somewhere in between. Because it's not about universals. It's not All or Nothing. There's a whole range in between.

...

Oh, one more thing. If you ever try to grab on to water, you might think that it's futile. But if you grab at it, you might come up with a little bit of water clenched in your fist. And even if not, you'll at least get your hands wet. So you'll still get SOMETHING.