Written and recorded Jan 25, 2021.

I can’t do it all.  

There was a Facebook thread a couple of years ago. Someone was asking for tips on meal planning. Everyone was chiming in and telling what they do and then one comment caught my eye. This friend listed the meals that she had on rotation. Her meals were all frozen and canned and packaged and processed and we all felt shocked that she was opening herself to the possibility of being trolled for her poor nutritional choices and she finished off her comment with, “and I’m fine with it because I can’t do it all.”

I couldn’t tell if this was a resigned, “I can’t do it all.” Or if was a battle cry of empowerment. 

But I do know that when she said she can’t do it all, what I heard was “I’m not alone in my failure.” And oh that felt good because misery loves company. 

Can we just pause here and note that I have never once heard a man say, “I can’t do it all.” It’s only been women. Maybe we should think about that.

I typically hear women say, “I can’t do it all” in two ways. The First is sort of a resigned, I’m giving up, sort of way. The other way has a definite stick-it-to-the-man attitude. A battle cry, a middle finger. Or it could be a hybrid, like looking for a way to explain yourself to all the people in the Facebook thread who cook dinner from scratch every night and freeze leftovers for future meals. This is why I do what I do AND I’m proud of it.

I can’t do it all says, “there is an expectation to do it all, and you’re falling short”

I can’t do it all says “I’d like to do it all, but there is a flaw in me somewhere that makes it so that I can’t.”

And then we begin to perpetuate a culture among women and especially among mothers where we prize productivity -  we encourage each other to get up early to get things done “it’ll change your life!”, and stay up late to finish your work because that’s what working moms do. If you try harder you’ll get closer to getting it ALL done. 

“I can’t do it all” turns the conversation to what I can and I can’t do. And we’ve been told that we can do anything we turn our minds to: If I try hard enough and work hard enough and want it bad enough, I can do anything and everything I put my mind to. But that’s a lie. 

I have a fair amount of life experience and it’s given me a pretty good handle on what I can and cannot do.  No matter how hard I work, I still fail. No matter how hard I try, I still fall short. 

You remember in the movie Sing where the elephant loves to sing but is too shy to get on stage? And then once she gets on stage and gets going, she’s just amazing? That all she needed was courage and passion and some animal friends? No, that’s not how real life goes! If anything, it’s closer to Mia Thermopolis where she has to learn things like how to wear pantyhose and walk in heels and speak clearly and deliberately and then she gets up on the stage and it’s half everything she practiced and half a mess. 

But we really want to do it all so we try really hard. And what happens is that we are overwhelmed and overworked and there’s always a sense that the things you’re can’t do are things that you try to hide from your friends or, if you can’t hide them, flaunt on Facebook.

If the paradigm we’re operating under says, “I can’t do it all, but I wish I could do it all”, we’re locked in an everlasting cycle of being slammed up against our limitations every day and fed the message that we’re failures.

The paradigm is fundamentally flawed. 

It is so flawed that I say we should throw it out all together. We should stop telling ourselves “I can’t do it all.”

We should stop telling each other” I can’t do it all” like it’s a badge of honor or a joke to distract each other from our shortcomings. 

Let’s make a pivot. 

Instead of saying, “I can’t do it all” let’s say, “I choose not to do it all.” 

I choose to let my car host an uncurated collection of ephemera and missing necessary items.  I choose to let my refrigerator descend into organizational anarchy.  I choose to reply to emails and texts haphazardly.  I choose to let my children go into public self-styled and possibly unwashed.  I choose to have walls that are blank, and not in the pretty, minimalist way, but in the I-can’t-find-or-afford-anything-that-looks-nice way.  I choose not to carry snacks and water bottles for my children.  I choose to let dust gather on fan blades for years at a time.  I choose to not strive for noteworthy academic prowess from our children and I will never have a bumper sticker that says my child is an A student in your local school.

This is the way we can take back the ordinariness and contrariness of real life where my dirty car is not a sign of weakness but a sign of action. 

Because we can go a step further and say, “Here is what I choose to do.”

I choose to keep my house clean enough that it promotes good mental and physical health for myself and my family. I choose to feed us food that keeps us alive. What it comes down to is that I choose to spend time on the things that are important to myself and to my family. 

And so does everyone else I know. And if you say to me that that sounds very nice but you have to do a great many things that are not important to you, but you are expected to do them and do not have the freedom to fling off the burden of unreasonable expectations, then I would suggest that you are, in fact doing what is important to you, which is to please the people who are putting those expectations on you. That is what you are choosing, and that is okay.

When we realize that we can choose what we do and what we don’t do, we free ourselves from the pressing prison of expectations that society has put upon us. A sense of autonomy is one of a human’s basic needs, and if we can stop the perpetuation of an “I can’t do it all” culture and shift it to a “This is what I choose to do” culture, just imagine how much better we’ll all feel.

Language is power and “I choose” has more power than “I can’t” any day of the week.

So, look, when I come over to your house and look up at your dirty fan blades, I will say, “Wow, good choice.” And you can say, “I know.”

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