The fear of not doing

The fear of not doing can be as real as the fear of heights or darkness. The internet is filled with ‘how to be more productive’ self help links. This shows our obsession with being of some use. This blog post can be relevant to those people who are obsessed with creating, those people who get an adrenaline rush when solving a problem and those people who just want to escape boredom. The urge to always create or be of some use is a natural human character in all of us but the intensity and cause of that urge can differ from person to person. It can sometimes even be counter-productive to always worry about being productive. I experience this myself. If I haven’t done anything productive for more than a day or two I fall into this abyss of low spirit, I don’t feel good about myself. 

There might be many forms and causes of this phenomenon.  There is a medical term called chronophobia, it is the fear of time or passing of time. On a macro level, this can be evident at important events in life like highschool graduation, Milestone Birthdays. When we look back and see time passing by, we become overwhelmed with the helplessness of our lack of control over time. To overcome this feeling of time going to waste we tend to create, by creating and doing we are leaving something to look back. It is not always possible to be purposeful and this can lead to anxiety and distress. In a paradoxical way more often than creating, this feeling will pull us back. When we base our satisfaction and success on our ability to create, be purposeful, to add value in some way, we feel very unsafe watching the seconds tick. This can't be more relevant than in our present time.

We are living in a time when everything is connected, our ideas are shaped by global forces and everyone has a far from real avatar in social media. The one in a million stories of extraordinary people doing extraordinary works are bombarded upon us through the media. We are constantly flooded by the perfect routine of perfect people achieving unrealistic goals. The social media has created this theater world which is far from real where all the participants seem to know what they want and are enjoying life and the guilt of wasting time and a fear of lagging behind subsumes us. We can take the example of the present time when most people are in quarantine, there is a trend of posting about your productive day in stories. Everyone is trying to participate and the ones that are not doing it are made to feel less of themselves. This may also be a mechanism of dealing with quarantine and loneliness but that is not the topic of this blog post.  Looking at the bigger picture an individual is competing with the virtual mass that consists of a bit of every one, which he himself is a part of, and can never win only increasing his fear of lagging behind and the fear of not doing. This constant glutting from the medias, despite protestation to the contrary, have made people (especially teenagers) follow this unrealistic and unsustainable life. 

Behind the urge to do is a search for the meaning of life. We tend to think that creating is the purpose of life: creating an idea, a product, an art or a solution. We create through our work, work is what gives meaning to us but in this esoteric system of economy we are ever more alienating from our work. Every work requires a specialist; everyone is tightening a screw in the assembly line never having the chance to feel the fulfillment of creating a complete product. I have a real life example which will demonstrate this. For anonymity let us assume a pronoun she and a name Sia. So Sia was an energetic girl: always learning new skills on her own, living by her own rules. She was an entrepreneur and a good one. She started earning at a young age and traveled around the world. She was a problem solver, when she had a work related problem she used to wake up all night working on that problem and she loved the challenge. But things changed as she had new responsibilities like marriage and child. She took a regular job at a new big city  because she needed a secure future. This changed everything, before she was creating something of her own and now she was part of this big company doing a small job. She missed the thrill and the fulfillment of creating. This led to her having an extra marital affair. The thrill of solving a problem, running one’s own business and travelling was fulfilled by this new secret relationship. We all have heard or seen this happen to many and even may have experienced something similar. The mundane job of our new economic system has made it more difficult to find a purpose in life. To cope with this many look towards other alternatives.

In this search for meaning and creation we surrender ourselves to religion: we are more serious about our faith now, we passionately champion for a cause, we join a fan club, we become a staunch supporter of an ideology. For me personally getting into a hobby is the best way to appease the demon of always doing. There is the excitement of learning something new and the  thrill of growing. But it is important to understand that just creating is not the purpose of life, sometimes just experiencing whatever life throws at us may be the only purpose of life. The famous saying of Joseph Campbell sums it up, ‘Life itself has no meaning, each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer’. So let's not make doing the only purpose of life. Let us also take time to take in and just enjoy the ride that is life.   

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by Nick