Living up to your potential is BS

"In almost every case when someone says, “You are not living up to your potential,” the proper answer is, “So what?” Because it’s always someone trying to tell you that the thing you should contribute to this world is something other than kindness."

I'm grateful to Penelope Trunk for her essay about living up to potential. Her message, that kindness is the only potential we need to worry about living up to, really strikes home for me. I am one of those broken humans that has to actually work at kindness...and work at it hard. I can never be reminded about my kindness struggle too often. And thumbing my nose at any schooly notion of potential is also intrinsically pleasing. Because, of course, the notion of potential is used to bully children everyday. Potential is a nearly empty signifier with regard to humans. We have potential and that's about all we can say about that. As its unmeasurable, potential is best considered only as a direction rather than a quantity for humans.

But the more I've thought about living up to potential this week, the more I've seen internal standards I set for myself, and use to bully myself as well. I measure myself against an invisible yardstick called, Successful Mother. No one knows what successful mothering is, exactly, but my failure to achieve the fullest direction of Successful Mothering dogs me every single day. I'm actually pretty cruel to myself about it, too. 

Let's take this moment as an example. At this moment there is a load of laundry soured in the machine. Its been washed three times and soured. Apparently I can run the damn load. I simply can not put it in the dryer. There are several pots of food rotting in my refrigerator that should have been cooked or thrown out; I've accomplished neither. One of those pots contains a $28 roast of beef, food my body very much could have used well this week, now ruined. The money the food represents, may as well have been thrown in the trash. The house is dirty in a basic way, but give me a pass on that because Friday is cleaning day. We're nearly there. What is harder to forgive is allowing two different workmen to show up here for jobs I requested they do, and having them arrive to workspaces so cluttered they were unworkable. Oops. One dog needs a shave. One dog could use a bath. One child has a persistent cough, I can hear as I type. Surely I should Do something about it. Successful Mother would be pushing medicinal teas and homemade broth, for sure. And in fact, its my general failure to figure out how to serve three homemade meals daily while also working four days a week that has driven us to eat out so often. This cough is probably caused by all the shitty food my kids have eaten this summer. The garden is not happening. The lawn is straggled and neglected. The list goes on and on. My failures, on and on. And it never stops.

Sure, I have done so much this week. This week, especially, just so much. If I made the list of things done, anyone would agree. But that never stops me from seeing only how I fail to achieve my full potential as a wife and mother relentlessly. Hum....where did I learn to only notice how I fail? Maybe 13 years in a system of grades?

Let's just stop, shall we? It isn't possible to do it all. It isn't possible to live up to random standards of mythological potential. Its not even a worthy goal. Aim for kindness and honesty and a basic standard of care. Throw away the left overs. Don't judge. Hug the kids and start over. The best parents just keep starting over, don't they? They don't over achieve. They simply refrain from quitting. If you showed up, body and soul, and were kind, you're a good enough parent.

One of my little hens began laying this week. For two days she laid the tiniest cutest most perfect little eggs. Then no eggs for two days. Today I found a double yolker in the nesting box. Little Hen, let me tell you something, don't over achieve. An egg a day is plenty.