Are you crafting the life you want?
Look online or talk to professionals these days and you’ll come away with the idea that that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
But lately, I’ve struggled to craft much of anything — not even a Popsicle stick figure. I have a pile of papers (affectionately referred to as the “pile of help me”) I’ve been meaning to scan, shred, or file that’s approaching dangerous heights. The massive amount of shelf-stable food I bought at Sam’s Club still isn’t unpacked and put away — it’s been there more than a week.
Easy target or privilege?
I doubt I’m the only one with a list of to-do items that keeps getting pushed aside as other tasks require more urgent attention. And as my husband badly trips on the space heater in our bedroom because I haven’t had time to declutter, as I spend most of my hours navigating my son’s mental health issues, and as I read the statistics about how much people are working and all of the responsibilities they are juggling, I can’t help but feel a bit like the idea of crafting the life you want has been hijacked into the world of toxic positivity. Because it fits so neatly into our ideals of independence, grit, and personal manifestation, we perhaps have become unwilling to acknowledge just how many factors beyond their control a person might have to overcome to get where they want to be, instead looking down on others with a wagging finger if they haven’t moved forward: “Why can’t they just find a way? They must not want it badly enough.“
Life crafting is not impossible to do. But I think for a lot of people, myself included, it’s not a matter of laying out a 5-point plan or signing up for a class — that is, simply deciding to make good changes is not a panacea that suddenly pushes struggle out of the way. As portrayed in The Pursuit of Happyness, life crafting is something you might have to fight with your whole being for, rather than a simple standard that everyone can accomplish as a default. The amount of effort it can require can be astronomical and almost break you.
Not in your ideal life? Don’t feel bad
None of this is to say that the idea of crafting the life you want is bad. There’s value in being deliberate, and you can’t win a race if you never put on your running shoes. I mean merely to assert that sometimes people work incredibly hard and still can’t get where they want to be.
So, we ought not not put shame on anybody who, despite their best efforts, is living out of sync with their ideal vision for themselves. It doesn’t mean they’re not passionate. It doesn’t mean they aren’t trying. It just means that, especially in this age, life and a lack of information and resources can get in the way of living.