On Kitting Up With Achilles
Epictetus' Door, the Urubu Indians, and burnout
I write in the same way you tug on a thread in a shirt. Sometimes it ends at half an inch. Sometimes it stretches to twelve. Questioning a single word might unravel an essay and this is one of the best feelings on earth. It is why I write.
That happened here with “kitting up” and the problem of burnout.
Burnout is usually thought of as exhaustion—a depletion of strength and energy—brought on by too much stress.
There is wisdom to be found here.
What causes burnout? A chronic urgency for tasks predicated on some future outcome: money, retirement, status, fame. A lack of control, belonging, and commitment. Burnout on the body feels like tension in the neck, heart racing, and lying awake at night. Burnout on the brain feels like choice fatigue, gnawing doubt, time dragging on, a desperate longing for some other life than this one, and “negative feelings toward people who seek aid.”1 It is a feeling of “If only I could...”
So it is a tiredness of everything. It is, therefore, a tiredness of nothing in particular.
We owe this tiredness a bit of gratitude for it is a blinking red light of the soul. It is a warning. We should know why so many men and women are tired from nothing in particular when many who have come before us flourished amid calamity. We should know what this burnout says about who we are and the world we have inherited.
Kitting up is a clue.
Kitting up is to don the gear of war. The name is young but the practice is ancient. It is a ritual. It cuts through everything outside of us and points to something within. Something sacred. What, then, is the cause of kitting up? An enemy. But what is an enemy? One who brings death.
Take the Stone Age: The Urubu Indians of Brazil kit up. “When they went to make war, the men put on their headdresses, tied on their armlets and wristlets, their belts and their collars, and painted themselves. They painted black stripes and circles on their faces with genipapo juice, and blackened their mouths with the burnt flesh of electric eels; they painted stripes and circles of genipapo on their chests and down their arms, daubed a large stripe of sticky milk from the massaranduba tree from armpit to waist, and powdered it with charcoal from the spoonwood tree; they stuck tufts of white falcon-down on their bodies and in their hair. Then they sang.”2
The savage painted black for war reminds up depletion of energy is a choice.
Take the Bronze Age: The semi-Gods of Homer kit up. “The brilliant Achilles began to arm for battle. A sound of grinding came from the fighter’s teeth, his eyes blazed forth in searing points of fire. First he wrapped his legs with well-made greaves, fastened behind his heels with silver ankle-clasps. Next he strapped the breastplate round his chest. Then over his shoulder Achilles slung his sword, the fine bronze blade with its silver-studded hilt. Then hoist the massive shield flashing far and wide. Then lifting his rugged helmet he set it down on his brows, and the horsehair crest shone like a star and the waving golden plumes shook. And brilliant Achilles tested himself in all his gear. Achilles spun on his heels to see if it fitted tightly, see if his shining limbs ran free within it, yes. And then, last, Achilles drew his father’s spear from its socket-stand—weighted, heavy, tough.”3
The Myrmidon hoisting bronze reminds us a lack of control and gnawing doubt is a choice.
Take the Kevlar Age: The warriors of today kit up. You lift your plate carrier off its wooden stand and place it over your head. The smell of dirt, sweat, and cordite floods your nostrils and kicks off visualizations of every cell and neuron dialed in on your heel-to-toe stalk towards a doorway and transitioning from a jammed rifle to a pistol in the light of muzzle flashes. You roll your shoulders until the straps sit smooth on your muscles and feel the comforting compression around your abdomen during each inhale. You grab your pistol, chamber a round, and hear the satisfying click of the slide gliding home. You take hold of your rifle, tilt it to the side, and watch the bronze round slam home. You bounce on your toes to test for anything that might make noise on a starless night.
The warrior wrapping armor reminds us contempt for those in need and tiredness of “nothing in particular” is a choice.
It seems burnout is not so much an ill of facing death as it is an ill of facing life.
Why?
Death puts the future to question. To achieve some future outcome we must be present now. Kitting up has a certain sense to it, a stern satisfaction. We become aware this may be the last time we paint ourselves red with sticky milk, fasten golden greaves, or take another breath. This slows things. Each moment becomes a Yes to life and the moment becomes all: inhale, be calm, be tall; exhale, be useful, be expendable. Flow through each moment as if it is your last—or your first.
Kitting up is to face death with agency. Not as a terror but as a test. Not as a victim but as a sovereign. It is being-towards-death. But death merely makes us present whereas kitting up is not only being present but owning the present.
And so we come back to modernity and its tiredness and we ask: where is the risk of death and the sacred act of kitting up?
Where we once faced feathered savages and bronzed semi-gods, all too many now face traffic jams and office buildings with no windows. Training our grip and lathering our skin in ink with our spinal columns vertical has turned into sitting at ninety degree angles in front of blue lights as the clock ticks and tocks and the back rots and sags. Focusing our attention on breath, beauty, and bearing with a Yes to existence now looks like craving cash, celebrity, and swiping pull-to-refresh feeds on social media until we realize we are standing in the middle of a grocery aisle. Bands bonded by a willingness to bleed for one another has given way to lonely houses and minds merged with liquid crystal displays.
Burnout. Even the word is misleading. It implies the flame in our core has extinguished itself through its own intensity, as if the flame burning too bright was the problem. Our irony is those who face death with ritual intensity are often those who are least likely to burnout despite burning the brightest. Intensity, then, is not the problem.
So let us redefine burnout: it is choosing not to channel enough intensity into seeing, feeling, and owning the worth of every second of our waking lives.
What follows? We once kitted up to face an enemy and an enemy threatened death. Does this mean we need Hector to remind us we will die?
No.
Says Epictetus: “The door stands open.” This is his paradoxically compassionate reminder of suicide. To those with closed windows and locked doors in their minds, his unique form of compassion may feel like a wooden club spiked with nails. To those who feel the call to know, it suddenly makes the color of the eyes of those we care for stunningly blue, brown, green, grey, or hazel. It is to ask “Do I want to live for this—will I want to have lived for this?”4 and then do something about it.
The open door reminds us death is under our control. Which means life is under our control. Which means the meaninglessness of our lives is under our control. And therefore the meaning of our lives is under our control. We make our lives what they are. The open door places this moment in front of our eyes, and kitting up is how we own it. Kitting up was—and is—a sacred practice of infusing life and breath, metal and tree, sun and death, with meaning, significance, awe, and gratitude.
And so as we kitted up for the bringers of death, we may kit up for the reminder of death.
It is to say No to things that do not matter and make the changes that need to be made.
It is to practice a total and absolute savage pleasure in everything that can happen. All the good. All the bad. All the evil. Every possible outcome visualized and conquered with the most brutal bright-eyed acceptance. It is to live as if your back is against the wall and the last thing you have left is your choice to die well.
It is a mode of mind.
To help What then? reach more readers, please consider adding a like, restacking, and sharing this essay to help spread the good word.
Längle, Alfried. "Burnout—Existential Meaning and Possibilities of Prevention." European Psychotherapy, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, pp. 107–121.
Huxley, Francis. Affable Savages: An Anthropologist Among the Urubu Indians of Brazil. Viking Press, 1957.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, 1990.
Längle, Alfried. "Burnout—Existential Meaning and Possibilities of Prevention." European Psychotherapy, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, pp. 107–121.
Death puts the future to question. To achieve some future outcome we must be present now. Kitting up has a certain sense to it, a stern satisfaction. We become aware this may be the last time we paint ourselves red with sticky milk, fasten golden greaves, or take another breath. This slows things. Each moment becomes a Yes to life and the moment becomes all: inhale, be calm, be tall; exhale, be useful, be expendable. Flow through each moment as if it is your last—or your first.
This paragraph has real punch to it! Awesome work Sam.
Sam: another thought-provoking essay full of nuggets to gnaw on for the day! The phrase “ brutal bright-eyed acceptance” wins the moment for me! I’m sure I’ll have a comment later after I’ve meshed it with the days’ challenges… Tim