Affliction

a syndrome/a decision

“It’s because of the syndrome,” she said via text. I was a little confused. I told her I had quite a few syndromes and she’d need to be more specific. Apparently my dear friend was referring to the I-Can’t-Sit-Still Syndrome, an affliction I’ve struggled with in varying degrees for decades. “Oh yeah that syndrome,” I responded. It was the kind of leveling observation that only someone who knows me intimately could offer. The pointed statement took the wind out of my sails and brought be back to earth.

I was momentarily entertaining the idea of going back to school and pivoting day jobs. I hit up my dear friend to get a temperature read on such a plan. This is something I do when my inner voice is obscured by distracted panic and entropic melancholy (a state I’m currently in). I reach out to survey the opinion of others. My own navigation system gets fogged up, so I attempt to use friends as a compass. Hopefully someone can point me toward north because I sure can’t. Am I totally insane? Is this idea ridiculous? Can you guide me towards good decision-making as though I’m a small helpless child? Thanks!

Pointing out my syndrome was the exact thing I needed to hear. What my dear friend, who’s witnessed my idiosyncrasies for the last 20 years, said snapped me back to reality. In her infinite brilliance she didn’t address the idea but questioned why I was asking in the first place. A gentle check on reality.

And she’s right. I do have I-Can’t-Sit-Still Syndrome (ICSSS). I’ve had it as long as I can remember. In childhood it was very literal. I had boundless physical energy. Running around like a feral animal was often the only cure. I distinctly remember needing to go outside and run around in 18 inches of freshly-fallen Missouri snow because my body couldn’t handle being indoors a moment longer. I barely got pants and shoes on before tumbling into a winter paradise.

Then as puberty set in that physical energy morphed into a restless mental energy. I was chronically plagued by greener grass in other pastures. The place I was never quite aligned with the place I wanted to be. Sometimes I would act on these antsy impulses and find myself having moved to another state or quit another job or started another creative project. Other times I would wait out the storm and let the feeling pass.

The tricky thing about life sometimes is that doing the impulsive thing, grabbing your shit and moving, doing the thing that feeds whatever weird syndrome you have, is actually the right choice. Sometimes I shouldn’t be sitting still. Sometimes stillness is the thing to be overcome, not the syndrome. Trickier still is knowing which path is right. No wonder I survey the opinion of others.

Which brings me to some of best advice I’ve ever received. It came from a different dear friend at a different pivotal moment in my 20’s: sometimes things don’t have a right answer. Sometimes you just have to use your best judgment and pick a lane.

This advice dropped like a bomb which is usually how you know it’s buried in truth. It was both a tough and a liberating idea. It’s tough because it means we don’t always get certainty. In fact we rarely do. We don’t always get a conclusive answer that a decision was right or wrong. Our lizard brains really struggle with that ambiguity. We like a strong solid confirmation. Even if that confirmation is you fucked up.

It’s also tough because it means no amount of survey taking will put you on a path toward correctness. Collecting everyone’s two cents adds up to nothing. In a world where lots of decisions don’t have conclusive outcomes, opinion gathering is just a pastime for the navel gazer. Consensus won’t sway an ambiguous reality.

And yet this advice was ultimately liberating. No right choice inherently means no wrong choice. There’s a freedom in knowing my destiny doesn’t hide behind a single door and that it’s possible to miss it. There’s a multiverse of destinies. Each one containing a plurality of good and bad and everything in between. So long as a choice aligns with my values, sits in my integrity, and is approached in good faith, then I am free. I simply try to pick a lane using the knowledge I have at the time.

I do my best to remember this whenever my ICSSS flares up. Sometimes the genesis of the flare up is a shiny thing across the room. Sometimes it’s the feeling of being bored and stagnant with current circumstances. In either case I remind myself that destiny doesn’t sit behind a lone decision. Just because I’m not in motion doesn’t mean I’m missing out on a brighter better future.

And a good rule of thumb for others afflicted with ICSSS: if something feels like a good idea now, it will still feel like a good idea in the future. Waiting can be an important part of decision making.

And for those who test negative for ICSSS: perhaps you could benefit from a little more movement in your life.

Just saying.