On March 18, 1980, a young historian named Marty Sherwin, then age 43, signed a contract with Knopf publishing to write a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. When Marty Sherwin signed the deal, both he and the publishing house expected that it would be a five-year project. He was to get paid $70,000, $35,000 up front, and the remainder five years later when the book was to have been completed.
But, famously, five years later, he had not completed the book. In fact, five years later, he had not even started writing it. Marty Sherwin was a meticulous researcher, and he found himself in a rabbit hole. He would spend twenty years doing research on Oppenheimer. His research came to 50,000 pages of original sources, including 8,000 pages of FBI records. There were more than 100 records of interviews.
So for twenty years, Marty Sherwin accumulated box after box of material. Boxes in his attic. Boxes in his basement. Boxes in his office.
There was just one thing he did not do. He did not start writing. The book that was to have been completed in five years was still not started twenty years later. At first it became a running joke in his family. Marty Sherwin’s son Alex recalled that when he was growing up, his father would say to him: “Alex, do your homework.” To which Alex would say: “Dad, write your book.”
But as the years went on, it got less funny. Sherwin told his wife I am going to die without ever writing this book. Put the epitaph on my tombstone: researched but did not write the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In a word, Marty Sherwin was stuck. S-T-U-C-K. Stuck.
Most of us are not stuck in the way Marty Sherwin was stuck. But who among us has not been stuck in our own way?
We are stuck in a job we don’t love, but we can’t figure out how to get out of it and what to do next.
We are stuck with our children. Little kids, little problems. Bigger kids, bigger problems, and often it is hard to talk about what really matters, so we let stuff go.
We are stuck in our marriage, okay, not great.
We are stuck financially, still worrying about inflow and outflow.
We are stuck emotionally, walking around with entirely too much worry and too many dark clouds.
We are stuck spiritually, another Rosh Hashanah, and the nagging question, have we grown Jewishly?
Our neshamah, our soul, our morale, our inner life, are all too often stuck in neutral.
If a goal of our life is to thrive, to live our best life now, in too many areas of our life, we are not doing that. In too many areas, we are stuck.
How do we get unstuck? We can learn from Marty Sherwin’s story how we can get unstuck.
The first move is to get help
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