What if you had nothing to prove?

I’ve been asking myself this question recently.

It’s a tough one. I’m over 20 years into my career and I still feel like I’m proving myself to someone most days. Even writing this blog sometimes feels like I’m proving something to myself. Or about myself. Or both.

But what if I began to drop the belief that I have anything to prove? What if I gradually started to believe that while I’m still doing the work and still learning, I don’t owe it to anyone to prove I’m worthy. I just am.

Can I just be good at what I do without having to prove I’m good at what I do?

This goes for non-job life, too. I was raised by a hard-working middle class family in a capitalist culture that taught me diligence and hustle are virtuous. That “being lazy” is just about the worst crime you can commit. That a lack of productivity is tantamount to a lack of gratitude. How dare you stay inside when the sun is shining? How dare you get bored? “People who are bored are boring.”

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to say any of those messages were wrong or harmful; in many ways they got me to where I am now. I hustled my way to this point in my life, and I’m proud of all that work. But I’m starting to really believe the only way to dismantle systems of oppression like capitalism and white supremacy is to have the energy and clarity of mind to imagine other options. And I can’t do that if I’m exhausted from constantly proving my (inherent) worth.

I also can’t imagine new worlds while I’m distracted by social media and focused on making enough money not just to live, but to buy the next scented candle or high-waisted jeans that will make life so much better and easier. Just the other day I was in a little boutique and the woman next to me held up a pair of joggers, laughing “I’m hoping these are the the solution to all my problems.” She was kidding, but only slightly. That’s why consumer culture is such an essential pillar of capitalism: why else would we continue to work like machines if not to buy shit we don’t need?

For all these reasons, rest is starting to feel like a form of resistance.**

Part of this is my own recent observation of myself either at full-tilt productivity and engagement or total exhaustion and hibernation. This last part is recent: a pandemic-era development. When we were forced (for an all-too-brief moment) to retreat from the world in 2020, I really started to notice how tired I was. And how much I enjoyed the break. And while I’ve been able to re-engage, it now feels like I tucker out more quickly. But I think that’s also because I don’t yet know how to engage at, say, a consistent 80%, instead of a variable 150%.

Beginning to unlearn all this messaging and socialization around worth and productivity feels important - and wholly antithetical to my nature. So I’m trying to let it settle in gradually. To not fall in the trap of being a perfectionist at rest, too.

And perhaps most challenging of all: to not feel the need to prove that I’ve figured it all out.

**HUGE caveat here that I have the immense privilege of not living paycheck to paycheck like many, many people. So this is all (as always) from my very limited perspective as a white American woman making enough money to be able to comfortably bitch and moan about the evils of capitalism ;)