Executive Function Super Power

A friend once asked me, "Have you never had an experience where you wanted to do something and you just couldn't get it done? Like, you woke up and wanted to do it, and then as time passed, you felt terrible that you just didn’t have the will-power to push through and get it done?"

And I looked at him blankly and said, "No, I don't think so. I mean, sometimes I've decided I didn't want to do that anymore and so I didn’t. Or I was too sick. But if I set my mind to do something or to accomplish something, I can’t think of any time when I didn’t follow through on the steps needed to get it."

He shook his head and told me that he wondered if I could ever really understand the Atonement in a Christian perspective if I didn’t have this experience. Like, why did I need Jesus if I had such success at being perfect all on my own?

I think about this now and again and it strikes me how different my experience of being human is from his. There are plenty of things I’ve wanted to achieve that I’ve failed at. But not because I didn’t put in enough time or effort, not because I didn’t do every step that I could to achieve that goal.

When I completed my first Ironman, I failed at my goal time by a good hour. But I had done every single workout that my coach had given me. Sometimes, I admit, I might have done a little bit too much. But I don’t think that’s what caused me to fail at my goal. I think my goal was unreasonable, and that first Ironman time is still my PR (personal record). I’ve never 3399come close to matching it.

Similarly, I failed at my goal to be a full-time professional writer. But I failed in part because I saw clearly what that goal would entail. I could have (I think) done what had to be done to become the kind of writer who makes a full-time living at it. I saw the artistic compromises that had to be made. And while I have friends who make those compromises and I think “good for you!” it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I ultimately decided that I’d prefer a full-time gig in the financial world so that I could write what I wanted to write. I failed at my goal, but because I decided I didn’t want it anymore.

I suppose you could argue that I failed at other things, too. Marriage comes up here. Remaining religious. But I wasn’t fully in control of either of those. I did what I did and I don’t feel like I didn’t do enough. If anything, I might have done too much, and damaged myself in my efforts to keep moving towards goals that I actually didn’t fully believe in anymore.

In the end, I don’t think this makes me less human or less in need of repentance (or whatever we’re going to call it if we don’t believe in religion anymore). I have made plenty of mistakes because I simply didn’t have enough information and was throwing myself at things that I didn’t understand. I’ve made mistakes because I didn’t understand the person I was trying to help well enough—or because I didn’t listen to them telling me their truths. I’ve made mistakes because I didn’t know the answer and I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

But I think I understand enough of being human that I understand what it’s like to wish you could human like someone else because it seems like a better way than your own way, which has fallen far short of what you wanted. I can understand imagining that other people have more control over their lives than you do. I deeply understand imagining that a certain set of skills would have saved you a lot of pain over the years. I also understand being filled with self-loathing because you aren’t at the point in your life that your younger self thought you would be at, and clearly the problem is YOU.