The Myth of 'Enough' — Rest for Everyone Still Climbing
Jay Kim
7 min read ⭑
In the summer of 2021, a young woman named Bekah tweeted, “I do not want to have a career. I want to sit on the porch.” Bekah was not a pop-culture celebrity, nor had she achieved social media fame, but her tweet was liked or retweeted hundreds of thousands of times. This young woman hit a cultural nerve. With 15 words, she described the distinctive angst of an entire generation.
We’re tired. We feel like we’re constantly on the go with no end in sight. Worse still, for all of our perpetual motion, many of us continue to feel no closer to arriving. And arriving where, exactly? Where are we headed? What are we chasing? Why are we going so fast, so hard, so relentlessly? What’s it all for? For many, the climb up the career ladder sounds like a grueling ascent toward meaninglessness.
According to one survey, more than half of all American workers feel burned out, and more than a quarter admit they find it impossible to unplug from work. More than one out of three people report feeling anxious or depressed, even when at home. Between 75% and 90% of all doctor visits are due to stress-related issues, leading to a trillion-dollar health epidemic in America alone.
愚木混株 Yumu; Unsplash
In response, some are starting to lie down. Literally. A few years ago, a young man in China named Luo Huazhong posted a photo of himself lying in his bed, the room darkened, along with the message, “Lying Flat is Justice.” Thus began a movement known as tang ping, which is Mandarin for “lying flat.” Luo had discovered that he enjoyed “doing nothing.” He’d spent years working under harsh conditions in a Chinese factory, overspent, underpaid and depleted. So one day he packed his bags, biked 1,300 miles to Tibet, and lived off $60 a month from his savings and working odd jobs. Admittedly, such a life does seem idyllic and wonderfully rebellious at times. But as one journalist astutely points out, “There is immense privilege in lying flat.” This privilege comes in many forms, but the one that underlies them all is the privilege of individualism.
In order to tang ping effectively and efficiently, one must put off all that hinders freedom of movement and the uninhibited autonomy to choose for oneself, each and every step of the way. As another journalist describes it, such an approach to life often becomes “an excuse to put yourself first by thinking, I shouldn’t have to deal with this person, place or thing because it doesn’t fit within my worldview.” So yes, such escape is an option, but its path demands a relinquishing of meaningful community and relational responsibility. This option is at odds with the biblical vision of peace, which is about much more than the quiet tranquility of solitude. The biblical vision of peace, best defined by the richness of the Jewish concept of shalom, is one of relational wholeness, equity and connection. The shadow side of the privilege of individualism is that it eventually leads to loneliness and isolation, a severing of shalom. “Lying flat” as a way of life then cannot possibly equate to flourishing; it inevitably turns to yet another iteration of survival.
Mimetic Exhaustion
In 1977, researchers Andrew Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore published a landmark study called “Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates.” The mouthful of a title can be understood this way: Infants mimic adults from the earliest ages. Meltzoff and Moore concluded, “Infants between 12 and 21 days of age can imitate both facial and manual gestures; this behavior cannot be explained in terms of either conditioning or innate releasing mechanisms. Such imitation implies that human neonates can equate their own unseen behaviors with gestures they see others perform.” We enter the world with a natural desire and ability to imitate others. The youngest child who exhibited this mimetic behavior was just 42 minutes old. One writer concludes that human beings “don’t learn how to imitate; we are born imitators. Being an imitator is part of what it means to be human.”
It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The truth of this aphorism is highly debatable, but even if accurate, it is decidedly one-sided. While the person being imitated is flattered, the imitator is, in the end, left fatigued and frustrated. Any attempt to be who we are not or to strive toward that which is not ours is futile and fruitless. The inevitable end is disappointment at best and destruction at worst. Marriages end, families implode, careers are derailed, churches fall apart and communities fracture because of mimetic desires gone awry. The potential consequences are real and profound.
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is obscure to most, but he stands out as one of the most prominent figures in a long-standing set of views known as philosophical pessimism, which asserts that life is mostly painful, meaningless, without any intrinsic value and unalterably stacked against human beings. Schopenhauer placed most of the blame on what he called the “will,” which he defined as a mindless, aimless, non-rational impulse at the foundation of our instinctual drives. He understood humans as creatures driven and cursed by a blind and relentless striving, rooted in an insatiable sense of lack and deficiency.
When Jesus was in his late teens, a baby girl was born about 2,000 miles away in what is modern-day Cologne, Germany. Born into royalty, her parents named her Julianna, a reminder of their familial ties to Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, who was also the girl’s great-grandfather. In her early twenties, Julia Agrippina gave birth to her only child and named him Nero. Obsession overtook Agrippina, and the rest of her life was marked by a furious ambition to see her son take the throne. She eventually married Emperor Claudius, who was her uncle, and convinced him to adopt her son, his grandnephew, as his heir. Five years later, Claudius was dead. Most believed that Agrippina had him poisoned, and her son Nero ascended as the new Caesar. Young Julia’s diabolical dream had been fulfilled, and she reveled in her victory — until Nero ordered the assassination of his mother when Agrippina was in her early 40s.
“When viewed through the lens of worldly and cultural definitions of success ... ‘Enough’ is a myth. It’s never enough.”
Julia Agrippina’s brief life was defined by endless calculating, conniving and a destructive striving for more. Those she hurt and the havoc she wreaked along the way were of no consequence. In the end, her own life came to an end by way of the same calculating, conniving and striving she’d passed down to her son. As Schopenhauer observed 18 centuries later, our sense of lack and deficiency can become insatiable, driving us even to the point of destroying those we once depended on. A wife kills her husband. A son kills his mother. Why? Because what they had wasn’t enough. And they were willing to eliminate anyone in their way of getting enough. But once they’d ascended to whatever heights they’d dreamed for themselves, they discovered it wasn’t enough. And it would never be enough. Which begs the question: What exactly would have been enough?
Julia Agrippina so desperately desired the throne for her son because she was born into a world where the seat of power was the most precious and desirable commodity, not because it actually was, but simply because everyone said so. And once that most precious and desirable thing had been had, what was left? For Nero, it was the disposal of his mother. Often, that which helps us acquire what we most desire eventually becomes that which we most despise. The ascending ladders we climb to the top become the descending ladders we burn for fear of spiraling to the depths. This is the madness of our mimetic proclivities.
“Ascending and Descending” is a lithograph print by 20th-century artist M. C. Escher. It is a remarkable example of what some call a visual paradox. A square rooftop is lined with a single set of stairs endlessly ascending or descending, depending on perspective. Hooded monks march in place, some ascending, others descending, all trapped in the same eternal loop on a staircase that both rises and falls simultaneously. In 1958, the British mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, along with his father Lionel Penrose, wrote about a concept they called the “impossible or infinite staircase.” The Penroses had conceptualized the idea after being inspired by the work of Escher. In turn, inspired by the work of the Penroses, Escher created “Ascending and Descending” in 1960. It has gone on to become his most well-known work, a visual masterpiece of contradiction. Like mindless automatons void of agency, the hooded figures walk in step, following whichever figure stands before them.
But who’s leading and who’s following?
Which way is up and which way is down?
Where is the top and where is the bottom?
Where do the stairs begin and where do they end?
These questions are intentionally impossible to answer, and that’s the point. Mimetic exhaustion is a vicious, endless, bottomless vortex of despair on despair.
Who’s leading you and who are you following?
Which way is up and which way is down?
Where is the top and where is the bottom?
Where does achievement begin and where does it end?
When viewed through the lens of worldly and cultural definitions of success, the questions are impossible to answer. “Enough” is a myth. It’s never enough. There will always be more. The ladder up is endless, each and every seeming mountaintop revealing itself to be a narrow plateau, with yet another ladder pulling and prodding you to continue climbing. The ladder itself is a lie. An abiding and settled satisfaction rich in depth and permanence is never “up there.” It’s always right here.
Jay Y. Kim serves as lead pastor at WestGate, a multi-congregational church in Silicon Valley. He hosts IVP’s Digital Examen podcast. His books include The Pace of Peace, Analog Christian, Analog Church and Listen Listen Speak. Jay serves on the board of Practicing the Way and has spent two decades in local church ministry, all in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving as a teaching pastor and church planter over the years.
Adapted from “The Pace of Peace” by Jay Y. Kim. Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.
