Professor Knezz
Photography by Julia Nichols
If you're reading this, your worth is not correlated with your accomplishments.
If you’re like me, working hard is something you’ve done forever, something you’ve integrated into your whole identity. Perhaps you have been working so hard for so long, you have started to lose sight of what you're working for and think only about what you're working against. The grind becomes itself a moral value. Exhaustion, hunger, and pain become signs that you're doing enough. The notion of rest can become terrifying because you've convinced yourself that your value is dependent entirely on how much you can endure. If you're reading this and you feel this way, you must do the hardest thing in the world, the thing I couldn't face until I was in my thirties, the cheesiest thing I could tell you to do. You have to treat yourself with love.
If the idea of telling yourself "No matter what I do, I am good enough" makes you feel uncomfortable, I understand. Maybe the suggestion even makes you angry because anyone who suggests it could not possibly understand the immense pressure that you're under. The pain you’re enduring cannot possibly be for nothing, and the pursuit of challenge for challenge’s sake has become your most trusted companion. You feel safe and in control when you continue to push yourself. How will you know that you're worthy if not by achievement? I understand all of this.
The notion of “self-care” (often now viewed as a cliché) has its roots in radical change work, among the masters of the game. Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” The truth is that you have passion and talent and both of these things will get squeezed for productivity as much as you'll let them. Your pursuits, once fueled by your beautiful and generous ambition, will be the source of physical, mental and emotional debilitation. Deep down, that pure part of you will resent this, and there is nothing more fatal to passion than resentment. The bravest thing you can do to protect that fire that motivates you is to preserve yourself before the fire goes out.
The goalposts will keep moving. The grind is inherently elusive, and as your endurance increases, so does the intensity of the grind. All this labor, presumably, is in pursuit of some aspirational version of yourself, yelling at you from the future to work harder or else you might fail. I encourage you to assess what this version looks like. I learned way too late in life that my aspirational self was not treating me with kindness. You deserve an aspirational self that wants to take care of you, and that means preserving your body, mind, and spirit for all the wonderful things you'll do in the future. The world needs you, and it would be a tragic thing to see your potential unfulfilled.
The people in your life who love you will do so no matter what you've done. It's hard to believe this, and it's hard to accept this kind of love when you don't believe you deserve it, but you do. Maybe you haven't experienced this kind of love before, and if that's true I promise that it is out there for you. You should not accept anything less. There are people who will be so proud of you for rejecting the self-destruction the world has set out for you. They will celebrate your restoration. I didn't believe it myself, but as soon as I took the risk and let go of my own rigorous standards, there they all were. You will be shocked at your gratitude and capacity to love when you let that resentment go.
This is not an easy ask, I know, and making the choice to let go will feel so lonely. It's hard to drown out the applause that the world gives you when you work yourself to death. You have to be confident that you know better what is good for you than the rest of the cheering world. You have to be brave enough to trust your mind and your body–to rest when you’re tired, to eat when you’re hungry. You have to turn to others for help and support. You have to trust that you can still achieve so much greatness simply by doing your best. You have to believe that softness isn’t weakness and that compassion can only be authentically given to others when you also afford it to yourself.
I know that it’s hard to let go of the comfort and control of keeping yourself bound up, but I promise you the liberation will improve your life and allow you to flourish. I look forward to a world where all our most brilliant thinkers and hardest workers are also free and healthy. I know you will do amazing things.
Professor Knezz, Northwestern University
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