228. Free Will in Reverse - Carmen Radley
Grant Wood, New Road (1939)
I see a larger story I’m telling myself: If I do the perfect thing—respond with the perfect blend of tenderness and tough love for a friend struggling with addiction, or show up in the fullest, most helpful, most loving way when someone gets sick—I can fix anything.
Several months ago, in a therapy session, I found myself recounting a challenging situation—what happened, what I thought had gone wrong, all those “I wish I’d done this” or “if only I’d done that.” My therapist saw that I was caught in a little whirlpool of regret and self-recrimination, and she stopped me and said, so gently and earnestly, “Carmen, you did your best.”
It was meant to be comforting, but I had the complete opposite reaction. I felt crestfallen and like a failure. I told her that I knew this response wasn’t healthy, but I heard in her words a critique: “Your best wasn’t good enough.”
I’ve thought about this many times since, and it’s been pretty illuminating. I can see a rigid perfectionism in myself, braided together with a thick thread of people-pleasing and another of codependency. I see a larger story I’m telling myself: If I do the perfect thing—respond with the perfect blend of tenderness and tough love for a friend struggling with addiction, or show up in the fullest, most helpful, most loving way when someone gets sick—I can fix anything. If I say the right words, look the right way, or perform perfectly, it’ll be alright.
I don’t know exactly where this story came from, or how long I’ve been holding onto it. I could have learned it from anywhere: from family or friends or religion or school or some societal messaging. Maybe I manufactured it myself; maybe it’s how my brain copes with uncertainty. Whatever the case, it feels old, and it’s exhausting. It makes me anxious—about mistakes I made ten years ago, how I might miss the mark today, and the many ways I’m going to screw up in the future. And honestly, it’s a little absurd. I carry a sense of responsibility for so many things I’m not responsible for. I cling to an illusion of control over things that are way beyond my control.
So I’m trying to replace that story with a different idea, which I encountered a few years ago in a conversation with a philosopher (I’ll spare you the details). More humble, less self-centered, and joyously liberating, it’s this: Whatever action you took in a given moment, it was what you’d been wired and conditioned to do. What you did was the only thing you ever could have done.
Sometimes I struggle with this notion, because it feels fatalistic, as if we’re trapped by both nature and nurture. I want to shout, “Where’s my free will?!” But mostly it calms me, when my head is swirling with those irrational “if onlys,” when I fear the weight of all my future mistakes.
I’m coming to think of it almost as free will in reverse. I can do my best, and it might fall short. My best might not be the best. But from that experience, I can learn, and I can do better.
- Carmen Radley
