What Will Happen if I Stop Moving Forward?

There’s a funny story I often tell about my grandfather in his 80s. He’s the grandparent who cannot sit still and needs to be active at all times, or else he gets borderline depressed.

My grandparents do not speak English, and came to the United States to live permanently with my immediate family several years ago. As such, it’s very difficult for them to navigate stores, and at one point, he misinterpreted the gender signs at an Old Navy bathroom. This caused quite a fiasco, as many female employees and customers thought he was trying to intrude on the female bathroom, and he, clueless, did not know how to explain himself. A family friend clarified the situation and confusion, but not without significant headache and a near disaster.

Regardless, whenever I visit my grandparents, he is the kind of person who is constantly cleaning, walking, doing housework, and tending a tomato garden he created from scratch. In a previous life, he was always working as a taxi driver, but now, at an elderly age, he hates the act of just sitting around, watching TV, being on the phone, and not doing anything.

My grandfather is an elderly, retired man. But that does not stop him. One time, my grandfather saw a tree that he deemed a nuisance to the property. He got an ax from the tool shed and started trying to cut down the tree as if he were a young man my age (27). As the story goes, he threw out his back and was in significant pain for weeks. On another occasion, he was on his daily walk around the yard, when he fell into a ditch and broke his knee. He also could not walk without limping for at least a month.

I know that at his age, he fears what will happen if he stops moving and stops being who he is. He is well aware that time and age have limited his physical capabilities, but he’s a man who would only get sicker mentally if he did not stay active and make himself useful.

Like other grandparents of my friends, to put it bluntly, he probably fears that if he stops moving and stops being active, he’ll die.

Unfortunately, I do share a significant amount of this restlessness and seem to have inherited it from my grandfather, as well. I can imagine myself in 50 to 60 years trying to perform activities I have no business doing at that age. Yes, gardening might be a manageable task for an 82-year-old man, but cutting down trees may not be.

I, similarly, have a very hard time sitting still. The other day, I watched a movie with a friend I hadn’t seen in years, and worked tirelessly the entire three hours studying for law school, catching up on work related tasks, and doing other goal oriented activities to advance myself. It was almost as if I couldn’t help it and the act was subconscious— I feared what would happen if I fell behind and did not get where I wanted to be in my readings. I feared what would happen if I was not well prepared for my classes and my job.

But it’s also the big decisions I make that remind me of how I’m like my restless grandfather. Right now, I am in working as a special education teacher, in law school at nights, training for marathons, and running the Boston Marathon next week. I also write when I have free time. I sign up for extra tasks and commitments, sometimes, without even thinking about whether or not I can handle it, but as a test for myself to see whether I can push myself without breaking.

Some of this comes from being an inherent people-pleaser and “yes man,” and some of it also comes from my ADHD making me driven by a motor. But I’m not going to kid myself. I love being busy. I love having the time go by very fast because I am so occupied. I enjoy having every hour of my day occupied. I didn’t sign up for all this because I wanted others to feel bad for me being such a busy person — I signed up for all this because I wanted to and I have megalomanic tendencies to think nothing can stop me and like I’m capable of anything I set my mind to, even if I logically now when I’m close to my limit. I wouldn’t say it’s just a natural ambition that drives me.

Always signing up to take the next step and ascend the next level is often something I do without even thinking. It’s almost how I’m programmed to operate, and it’s been that way since I was very young, and something I have always been known for. I want to be a jack of all trades — and a master at all of them, too (which is probably unrealistic, but I do force myself to try).

One place I always have a hard time is, unfortunately, vacation. Vacation is supposed to be a time of rest and recalibration and time spent with my wife. For me, vacation sometimes feels like a waste of time and money when we’re not engaging in some kind of date or couple activity. Sitting around on a beach and not doing much, however, is pretty cool for two or three days. But after a couple of days, if I am not pursuing side hustles and attending to projects, I start to feel like my grandfather does and feel out of sorts.

What am I doing to advance myself and move myself forward with my life?

There is a deeper, more existential element, however. It’s not that I just feel restless and always need to stay active.

There’s just the bad feeling of being stuck and in a pile of quicksand. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve been there — when it’s just me, my thoughts, and internal struggles I need to work through. I do know there’s a part of me, and perhaps a lot of people who operate the same way, that just wants to avoid that feeling at all costs.

I think we all have deeper and existential issues we would rather avoid dealing with. For me, I do go to therapy every couple weeks and have deep conversations where I talk about the childhood experiences that undergird much of my behavior or past trauma. I talk to close friends and my wife about those experiences. I had always kept myself busy, growing up, to distract myself from trouble at home, including tremendous strife and screaming between my parents. But that tendency becomes less useful over time as a grown man with my own marriage and family.

I think there’s also a part of seeing myself more highly when I’m super busy rather than not. It’s not just a status symbol to others in a hypercapitalist society where ideas of wealth generation and self-improvement are byproducts. It’s also a status symbol to myself, that I’m constantly moving, achieving and advancing more and never staying stuck.

But it’s also a coping mechanism, undeniably.. If you stay busy, you never have to deal with something on a deeper level and need to sit, think, or feel for too long.

There was a period of time, during my senior year of college, when I felt completely isolated, like no one understood me, where I was stuck and had to spend a considerable amount of time alone, processing thoughts and feelings in idle time.

It was not fun. I spent much of the time in a deep depression, wondering whether I was useful to the world or others or not. There were days I was awake until 2 a.m., panicking over my existential and identity crises over a personal life in shambles and burned bridges. I was in a stage of grieving a lost sense of self and had to completely remake who I was.

I would not wish how I felt that year on any person in the world, and I never wanted to feel that way again. Sometimes, too much idle time brings me back to that time and those feelings. I try to escape those moments of feeling like a black sheep and losing a part of myself, and I do so by always moving forward and staying busy.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you need to just, well, feel the negative emotions that often come with being stuck. I would rather not think about the most traumatic moments of my life most of the time, but I do acknowledge that these moments explain a lot about how I act now.

It’s not always super deep. But sometimes, it is. I struggle with who I am if I’m not occupied every second of the day with something I perceive to be moving myself forward. I feel like I lose a piece of myself when I feel stuck, like I’m brought back to the body of a younger, weaker, more naive version of myself.

I fear, if I stop moving forward, I will be brought back to the depression and unhappiness of that time. I fear I will be brought to a mental and emotional place I won’t be able to come back from.

That’s a difficult and unpleasant place for me to be, and certainly, not a place I want to be in all the time. But I know, sometimes, it’s a necessary one to really tackle life head on.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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