2026-08-15 ## Putting Down the Progress Bar ## ![[sand-face.jpg]] ### A Connection between Inadequacy and Contribution Gratitude for this month of August, a time where we are invited to rest. As my colleagues are away on vacation, and as the house mates are on camping trips, I too find myself departing from my usual routine. I’m grateful for the solitude. At the beach the sun warms my skin from above, and the sand warms my back from below; I melt peacefully into a nap as the waves take away my thoughts. I find myself relaxing the intention to do healing activities. I’m grateful that I can take off the pressure to get anything achieved at all, and that the body is content with that. - As the days pass around the month of August, I am feeling a pull to contemplate some more around the theme of Inadequacy. In my journal I wrote a saying which I really like: _ “I go to the beach in order to renew a sense of freedom, vitality and abundance. I go to my job to renew a sense of restriction, worry, and poverty.” _ At one point not long ago it was the other way around. More money in my bank account made me feel secure and happy. Its understandable, actually. I can’t move around the city without money. Sometimes though, my job is draining, and I often struggle to drag myself out the door in order to be somewhere I’d rather not be. Of course, as long as that’s happening there is going to be a part of me that is fighting. I notice that my vitality drains in two major ways at work: the energy that is used up to perform my duties, and secondly the energy used up to force or drag along the part of me which is feeling disappointed to be there. Internal conflict, I feel, is the bigger drain. I feel restricted since I am trading a part of my will, attention, effort for money. Contrast this to being at the beach where there are no rules except for the ones I impose on myself, the ones that I bring from the city to my secret spot. They begin to soften the longer I relax into my little childhood self, an innocent and natural being. I do what I please, holding into consideration others around me of course, but there is no one there to say, “if you don’t do this properly, I will fire you.” This threat of course means my survival is at stake since money is a necessary part of affording the things I need to live. Except, the beach is completely free to access 24/7, and it is for everyone. I can physical feel the space renewing my vitality from the depths of despair. I cannot go too long without her. So society has created a setup whereby the feeling of inadequacy is hard to avoid. In the past I’ve felt inadequate when friends would travel to exciting places but I couldn’t participate because I couldn’t afford it. In such cases, my financial wealth was tied to my feelings of belonging. Every place requires money, and yet to acquire money we have to jump through the hoops of employment in order to get money. The feeling of inadequacy is the strongest for me in the first few weeks of getting a new job. Until recently, I’ve always felt high pressure to perform so as to escape a certain explicit or implicit probationary period. “Do your job well, make a good impression, less you want to be let go.” I notice that Inadequacy is tied to my own identification with my job performance, as well as to unmet needs that occur as a result of working long hours under pressure. “This piece is not good enough, I can’t stop working until my manager is satisfied with it. If I can’t get this done in time, then I’m not good enough for my job.” Queue a few more uncomfortable hours. So work teaches me and rewards me to side against myself, to ignore my own human needs. This is a big departure from where we have come as humans beings. I was watching a documentary on the San Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, and there are 2 or 3 scenes which bring up a lot of emotion and tears to my eyes. In the scenes the bushmen are returning to their village from their hunting expedition. They carry animal meat on their shoulders, and when the villagers see them returning from afar, they begin dancing with joy. They clap, they dance, and they welcome the hunters cheerfully as they arrive. The entire village does this, from little kids to the eldest. I would too, if I was part of the tribe and I saw that my own survival depended on a fellow hunter’s ability to do their job. I’d be jumping with joy and gratitude to have food in my mouth. I don’t have a family of my own, but I can imagine myself in the hunter’s shoes, coming home to my family which is the whole village really, clapping for me, for my hard word in bringing food for them to eat. This is the greatest source of contribution I believe anyone can experience. I think most fathers and mothers are familiar with this feeling when they cook, when they see their children and their family getting joyful when they eat a good home-cooked meal. We all have the human need to contribute. Companies leverage this human need in a job application by stating “you work will impact many people.” I don’t have a village that I can feed, nor does my current circumstances permit of me an ability to feed many other people. I am somewhat trapped in my current circumstances, and strapped for a little while as I do my schooling. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t find that sense of contribution somewhere else in my life or even within my current job. I’ve felt that sense of contribution whenever I volunteered in the past. The attitude I have felt from management in a volunteer position is different than one felt under employment. Thankfully, my experience of volunteering has for the most part lacked that transactional quality that comes with making a deal, and instead I am showered with much appreciation. When I zoom in on that, I see that the transactional quality comes with clear expectations written in paper, and that once any of those expectations are broken, then the other parties involve become upset, angry and even resentful. Of course its difficult to appreciate anyone who “didn’t do their job properly.” But where is the humanity? At what in time did I become a robot? Thankfully, I’ve never had a manager in a volunteer position become upset at anything I have done. On the contrary, a normal work culture, especially when there are management hierarchies involved, seem lack this appreciation. So it is with joy that I volunteer. Seeing my hard work bring others joy is a wonderful experience which meets that need. To me, inadequacy is when a person who works hard brings the fruit home, but the person receiving that fruit says to them, “no this work is not good enough. Do better next time… or else…” It is so important and vital for me recognize this, because in doing so, I can see that I am taking that attitude home from my workplace, and I am making it my own, and in making it my own, it becomes the way I treat myself on a chronic basis. This, I notice, is how inadequacy propagates. To really beat that to curve, then I feel I must appreciate myself, even if whatever it is I do is a tiny little thing. There are lots of tiny little tasks all throughout my day. I can appreciate where I am, how far I’ve come, and the things I do on a daily basis which keep me going for just another day. I look for ways to celebrate my choices, whether good or bad. My current conclusion about inadequacy lies at the heart of identity itself. I’ve noticed tremendous relief when I don’t take my job personality, when I don’t identify with my performance. This is in opposition to what is encouraged in society. When I used to make my resumes I would look for ways to puff up my self-image on the resume so as to make an appearance of me as a person who is definitely up to the job, and to be seen as outstanding from the rest of the applicants. I refuse to play that game any longer. There are better ways. If I can appreciate my own past experiences, and feel good about where I am without the need to show it off, then my personality relaxes, and I become easy going, which ironically makes me more of a team-player and the confidence in my own ability as a team player goes up. Again, I’m grateful for the month of August as it seems that the season has passified everyone’s perfectionist tendencies to a small degree, and the whole of my community has basically “chilled out.” Inadequacy is in part driven by perfectionist tendencies. Now, however, there is a lull in activity, a decrease in the frequency of “checking in” to see if everything is where it should be, a trust that things are alright. I notice that the harder I drive myself to get to where I want to go, towards high ambitions perhaps, the more inadequate I tend to feel. Its probably because on some subconscious level I think: “I won’t be good enough until I have reached my goal.” I wonder how the San bushmen can be virtually dis-identified with their performance. Its probably got something to do with how they are so intensely focused on their senses in the present moment, that they leave little room for self-consciousness at all. Not only that, they understand deeply the relationship between how much energy they aught to expend, and what is outside of their control. A hunter’s good job translates to food in many people’s mouths, and at the same where the animals and where food is found is completely outside of their control. They are supported by the earth on a continual basis. They live outside, the land feeds them and holds them and embraces them. I’ll have to look into it in more detail. That’s all for now. Thank you for reading! Unknown Artist At Taylor Beach - It always warms my heat when I see art at the Beach. Its a good reminder not to take things too seriously. Feel free to journal on this using the following prompts or to respond in a chat. Pondering Questions - Which areas of my life do I feel Inadequate? - What does inadequate feel like to me? Where is it on my body? - Where do I go to play, and what does play look like? - Where is my favorite spot in nature, what makes it so attractive me?