It Does More Than You Know

Breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know. I think as I try to ground myself once again.

“Jake?” Aaron, my best friend since first grade, spoke with a flicker of concern.

I looked at him disjointedly; my head rose, then my eyes followed, ending with a ghostly smile.

I said, “Sorry, I totally lost what we were talking about.”

“Yeah,” was all he mustered out. He was studying me, probably more obviously than intended.

What was I going on about? We started on, on mental health? Shame? Social movements going with… oh yeah.

“Okay, yeah. Sorry, so I was saying how we seem stuck in this… this limbo between wanting compassion to drive us, yet a growing lack of trust between others. The in-groups are, um, resistant to the out-groups in social settings, yet we live in a time with more… global interconnection than before. You know? The shaming put on Americans for not following the new social code is causing this this opportunity, no. This crossroad between peoples. Politically, we are so polarized…”

I trailed off for what felt like the twelfth time that conversation. My left hand went to my forehead as I took a few deep breaths trying to calm myself down. Aaron was patient, he always has been.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m tired.”

He almost laughed; he sucked in but exhaled like a deflated balloon as his laugh box didn’t fully catch. This made me chuckle, which ignited his laughter, thereby transitioning me to near hysteria as my eyes watered. I roped it in with some deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know. A mantra I’ll never forget.

---

Three weeks later on Zoom, “Jake? Did you catch all that?”

“Yup.” It was my sheepish tone that likely prompted my supervisor’s next question.

“Great. Can you repeat back to everyone what I just said then?”

Seriously? I think as my finger hovers over the 'END CALL' button.

“Jake?” We both knew that I could only regurgitate buzzword-intensive summarizations, but that knowledge did nothing to soften his stone heart. Maybe he even enjoyed it; maybe he enjoys watching others stumble, I don’t know.

I began walking the plank, “Well, you said how the the global burden of disease is poorly distributed. That certain drugs—I mean regimens—are going to areas that don’t need them but can pay the premium.”

My supervisor, Mr. Williams, was a stubborn man. He founded and nurtured the Global Innovation Project since 1993. The organization transitioned his dream of quantifying drug and disease impact into an open-source database. Refusing to let roadblocks slow him down and dead ends stop him, when the sixty-eight-year-old had his mind set on something, it happened. In this case, it was to embarrass me in front of the nonprofit.

“Great, Jake.” As if my name was an insult. “What about India? What has contributed to their reduction in lives lost due to tuberculosis? Did you write down the drugs recently administered? How they’ve had trouble maintaining funding with COVID-19 absorbing nearly all medical concerns? How about Nepal, Pakistan, and Myanmar? How their geographic similarities have played a role in the pandemic?”

I cannot remember what I said. A lot of “um” and “ah”, that’s for sure. I do however remember the shame, the shame of seeing my brain click and clack like a grandfather clock.

“I’m sorry, I’m tired,” I ended my ramble with. Breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know. The lullaby soothed me.

---

Yesterday: one month after Mr. Williams embarrassed me, seven weeks since last talking to Aaron.

“Hello, Jake. How are you doing today?”

“Tired,” I rarely beat around the bush with my therapist.

She nodded and said, “I can see that.” I chuckled.

I meet with Dr. Collins biweekly via Telehealth. There was no particular reason I started seeing her. In the past I went to therapy for my focal seizures and depression, but this time was different. This time around I began sessions because… well, because why not? I am fortunate to have the financial flexibility and I am functional with my mental health, but I asked myself, maybe seven months ago, why stop there? Why call the minimum enough? Why not continue talking and remembering to love myself as much as possible? Anyways, that’s why I meet with her, because it helps.

“You graduated last week, correct? How was that?”

I thought about saying that it was disappointing, or just laughing because the virtual graduation ceremony was less climactic than the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Instead, I went with option number three, “It was fine.”

She nodded, waiting for me to say more. I didn’t.

Breaking the silence, she said, “Coming from someone who just received their diploma and is transitioning into the next phase of life, I’d expect more.”

“More what?”

“More vigor, energy. Some excitement and nervousness. Possibly even dread. You however seem… indifferent.”

On the nose, Doc. Unclear of where the thought came from.

“Yeah, I guess I haven’t thought about it much.”

She nodded and said, “Do you have plans?”

I have plans, that’s for sure. My partner and I are moving to Burlington, Vermont come the new year. A few weeks following that I’ll be working full-time, and volunteering with a local nonprofit. I also want to finally publish my fantasy novel. So you know, just simple stuff.

I explained this to her, even though she knew most of it already. She didn’t break eye contact with me as I spoke and held her usual intensity. The look wasn’t scary, just focused. She saw what I said, and didn’t say. She read between my lines.

“That sounds like a lot,” she said after I finished. “What about time for yourself? Time to relax and rest?”

She was headed in a direction I knew too well: workaholic. A few people in my life have called me that before. They said how I would run myself down to bits and still refuse to stop, my dad is the same way I guess. Is it really criticism though? Isn’t sloth a seven deadly sign?

I said, “Yeah, I know. It’s a lot, but not as much as I was doing.” This was true. After graduating I stopped working as a TEDx Director, left a couple of nonprofits, and—thankfully—removed myself from the toxic Global Innovation Project. On top of all that, my studies were complete. Now all I had to do was work a job and stay motivated on my hobbies. Easy.

“Are you getting enough sleep, Jake?”

At the time I thought the question was unwarranted. Looking at myself in the mirror later that day however, I noticed the bags under my eyes screaming otherwise.

“No. Not really.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been busy I guess.”

“Do you fall asleep easily once you’re ready for bed?”

“As in, do I have trouble falling asleep?”

“Yes.”

Like a flash of light, I relived my frustration last night. My digital clock hit three in the morning as I let out a groan. Rolling from my back to my right side for the seventieth time, I battled with myself to relax. I only persevered forty minutes later once—breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know—was in my head like counting sheep.

She nodded as if I just gave her the opening she needed to checkmate me.

“And why is that, do you think? What keeps you awake?”

What doesn’t keep me awake?

“My thoughts just keep circling,” I said. “It’s like I can’t turn my brain off.”

She said, “You know, we’re the only animal on the planet that deprives ourselves of sleep, and yet we are the smartest. We prioritize projects over health. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? It perplexes me. We don’t look at sleep like we do our other necessities. We don’t go without food or water when busy,” I had forgotten numerous times over finals week to eat, but I kept that one to myself, “and yet we see sleep as this… responsibility. Rather than a need, it’s seen as an option that you should do. Therefore, it seems that your mind chooses to stress over work and planning out what’s to come, over your need to sleep.”

She’s two for two.

“I hate it,” I confess, thinking about how exhaustion has been affecting me. “I feel like I’m only halfway there in conversations. Words come to me slowly and I lose a sense of direction in my ideas so easily. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Dr. Collins took a moment before responding, “No, you’re not losing your mind. It's just on low battery.”

“But. But what else can I do? I can’t help from thinking, even when I’m trying to sleep. I just keep thinking about what I’m going to do next, and then after that, then following this, and that and that and this. It doesn’t stop!”

“Why do you believe these preparations are so important to you?”

“Because,” I said. “Because I guess… I don’t know.” The answer arrived gradually. Once at my throat, it now danced on my lips. “Because, well. I guess I think since I need to. The next day will be busy and I need to have my plans sorted out. I need to—”

“You need to?” Checkmate.

“I… I guess not. But planning…”

“Even if it gets in the way of your health?”

To that, I could only shrug. I said, “Well, never mind the planning. I need to work, and I really want to volunteer and finish the book.”

Dr. Collins said, “Yes, but at what cost? It’s about a balance, Jake. Are you familiar with Icarus, the boy who died flying too high, melting the wax off his wings?”

“Yeah, I get the idea. If you stretch yourself too thin, you’ll burn out.”

“Right,” she said. “However, that’s only half the story. Daedalus, Icarus’ father and the inventor of the wings, warns his son to also not fly too low—the ocean water will make the wings too heavy to fly. For some reason, people seem to have forgotten this part of the story. The story, therefore, teaches both the dangers of pushing ourselves too hard and not enough. So Jake, I’m not asking that you drop everything, just that you care for yourself. You need to give yourself time throughout the day where nothing is going on, breaks between the rush. Prioritizing yourself while not forgetting your ambitions. Does that make sense?”

It did and it does. She was saying an old idea in a new way: Breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know.

---

So here I am, today, writing this all down. My New Year’s resolution is to find a balance, to go easier on myself.

These last couple of years have been incredibly stressful for us. Loved ones split apart, hospitals overflowing, inequality rising, environmental destruction unrelenting, political tensions climbing, and economic recession inevitable to only list a few. But that’s not all, we are persevering. We are triumphing through these days and I believe that we will come out of them stronger. This however won’t happen overnight, and not by simply wishing that things will improve. I believe this with all of my heart and refuse to fly too low, and in just the same vein, I (we) must also not fly too high.

My resolution is to incorporate rest. To start prioritizing sleep the same as any other necessity. I want to help and can only do so while putting my best foot forward. Sometimes that means doing a little less, but sometimes more is less. Sometimes we need to charge our batteries and there’s nothing selfish about that.

So, I’m out of here. My phone is on ‘no disturb’, the laptop shut off, and I’m going to bed. As I lay in bed with the blankets tucked, I’ll only have one thought on my mind. The words Aaron soothed me with sixteen years ago on a night I thought the bed bugs would crawl out and get me.

Breathe in, breathe out. It does more than you know.

Thanks Dad.