When knowing isn’t the problem

I've become increasingly convinced that insight is often not the thing we're missing.

We can know a relationship has ended before we can leave it. Know a career no longer fits before we can imagine another one. Know a boundary before we can tolerate what setting it might cost us.

Last week, I felt this in a much more ordinary way.

It was the beginning of the school year. I was working, single parenting, supporting aging parents, and catching up on everything at home that we'd happily neglected while the kids and I were away in California.

And every day, I watched the things that weren't absolutely required fall away.

I wanted to write. I wanted to share more of the work I've been building. I wanted to get my voice out into the world.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

And at the end of each day, when I finally found a few minutes in which I could have done it, I couldn't.

There was simply nothing left.

Not because I had changed my mind.
Not because it wasn't important.
Not because I needed more clarity.

I had reached the edge of my capacity.

It made me think about how easily we can mistake the distance between knowing and doing for something else.

A lack of discipline.
A lack of courage.
Procrastination.
Fear.
Uncertainty.

Sometimes those things are there.

But sometimes we know.

We just don't yet have the capacity to live what we know.

And that distinction feels important to me.

Because if the problem isn't clarity, asking ourselves to think harder won't solve it.

If the problem isn't courage, telling ourselves to be braver won't solve it.

And if the problem isn't motivation, another productivity system probably won't solve it either.

Sometimes the work isn't increasing our capacity to carry more.

Sometimes it's noticing what is consuming the capacity we already have.

And here I am, a week later, writing this.

Not on the schedule I had planned. Not because I finally pushed myself hard enough to get it done.

I simply listened to what I could hold in that moment and let that be enough.

The desire to write didn't disappear. The work didn't disappear. I didn't lose whatever momentum I imagined I was supposed to be maintaining.

A little more capacity became available, and here I am.

Maybe there's something in that, too.

Maybe honoring our capacity isn't always about giving up what matters. Sometimes it's what allows us to stay in relationship with it until we can return.

Which makes me wonder whether we've been asking the wrong question.

Instead of:

How do I know what to do?

Perhaps sometimes the question is:

What would I need to become capable of living what I already know?