The Voice From The Back Row

Overwhelmed:  overcome completely in mind or feeling: loaded (burdened) with an excessive amount of anything (dictionary.com)

These are the feelings which are becoming increasingly frequent and increasingly prominent for me, and I believe, from listening to people talk, also to others.

The fact that this post is five days late, to my definite discomfort, is witness to the power of feeling overwhelmed.  Yes, time has again increased its pace, and it seems like there is less and less time to do more and more.  Computers, of course, have little problem with this; it is people who are feeling the pressure of trying to keep up the pace.   Although these things are real, I do believe that there is also an element of perception which predisposes us to feelings of being overwhelmed.

I am far from being a master of this situation.  I can share how I am affected by it, and what thoughts I have developed about it, but that is all.  I have not yet discovered how to disengage myself from overwhelm (yes, I have coined a noun from a verb).

This year, it seems as though the minimal work needed to competently do my job takes half again more time than it did last year.  This is true for both my jobs, but especially my weekday one.  Minimal work to keep order in my house is experiencing a similar squeeze. Work which had been postponed for a more opportune time is raising its head and demanding to be done.  Time for reading has all but disappeared, and time for non-productive activity (walks in the park, flower gardening, presentations on DVD, streaming, online or TV, other than basic cooking, and the like) are well on the way to a similar fate.  It is a struggle to schedule time for family and friends, no matter how much I may want to see them.  Sleep more and more often drops below the 6-hour threshold.

Mentally, I feel foggy – not enough to seriously hamper work, but enough to be uncomfortable.   Emotionally, it is easier for me to lose my center.   Physically, I feel tired much of the time, and take cat naps when I can.   I feel guilty about not accomplishing what I have envisioned, and frustrated that there seems to be not enough time to do it, no matter how hard I work and push myself.   Do I choose to order and beautify my environment, to earn the money necessary to pay for that environment, to just have a little fun or  sleep?  Such choices seem difficult.

Yes, there is an element of perception there about how I see the existing issues, and also how I feel about them.  I sense that there is a way to handle all this calmly, to be able to ride the tiger, so to speak.   In practice, all I have been able to access is taking things one at a time, staying focused on what is in front of me now (or choosing on what to focus at the moment).  Sometimes I can do this.   Sometimes all the to-dos gang up in an active mind and demand attention at the same time, as if they were a set of octuplets.  At those times, it is less easy to quiet them.  And then, there is the issue of sleep.   Computers who can handle everything (and who are also demanding and bossy) do not need sleep.   People do.

All this does not mean that life is awful.  There are certainly many blessings for which to be grateful.  There are certainly accomplishments from which to take comfort.  There are the little things – a few days of beautiful weather, some tree-lined roads, machines, especially cars, that work, heat and air conditioning, the company of people with whom I live, work, and visit, employment that I like to do, an outing now and then – such things are good to focus on and enjoy.   This, too, can help to balance the feelings of overwhelm.

There remains, of course, the option of distancing myself from the mainstream.  Simply distancing myself – running away from the issue, so to speak – would be a choice leading simply to a gradual decline, a growing disability to interact with the present in all its variety.  One is in the world for a purpose.  Running away is not an answer.  There is a difference between not engaging and engaging but balancing and grounding the energy.  Learning the latter is harder, but more viable.

There is also an approach which most people seem to ignore.  That is the growing life choice of living in community, where work is shared.   I am not necessarily referring to a commune, or to a guru-led organization.  Community is people living in proximity, sharing and caring for each other voluntarily (we can share cars, vacuum cleaners, laundry facilities, clean energy generating facilities, good times, economic needs, and still retain a measure of privacy).  Community requires that people learn interdependence (as opposed to the “I” alone) and to relinquish the concept of competition in favor of the concept of cooperation.   All that learning can also be difficult, but those who are doing it are pointing to a more viable future.

I wish blessings to all of us who are feeling overwhelmed just now.   Take heart and keep up the good work – we are all doing it.   May we all feel less pressured as we learn and grow.

Peace, Diane

Several days ago, my email crashed.  With the help of Juno’s technical people, my daughter, who is more tech savvy than I, was able to bring back the application’s framework, but all data, including folders, permanently vanished.  I had been having problems with the email but had attributed them to the fact that I had an ancient computer that ran an ancient browser.  The Juno technical people informed us that the data had been lost because Juno was not compatible with Windows 10 on my new computer.   I have been grieving the loss of my data, and the loss of working on a system with which I am familiar, as a new email account will need to be established and learned.

Although the situation is unfortunate, there are still choices I have about how to respond.  I have tried several.  One is anger at the application provider, and anger at myself for being too dependent on Juno and at being unable to fix it or get it fixed.  Another is self-pity – why me??   A third is avoidance; maybe if I don’t get back on email and just ignore it, the situation will go away.  None of these helped.  Still another is acknowledging my own resistance to learning new applications, especially as these are always changing.  Some people, however, might be happy at the chance to learn a new program, and might enjoy working with the technology.  That is also a choice.  A contrasting choice might be grim acceptance and soldiering on.   An extreme choice might be to opt to eschew email completely.  For me, I think, the prompt to examine myself and my resistance to continually changing and more complex technology is of importance, as well as the apparent message that it is time to move on, in this aspect at least.

The point is that in any given situation, there are choices of how to respond, and those choices influence the outcome of the situation.  How we respond to a situation is more important than the situation itself.   Our responses act to create a situation more to our liking, modify the situation, or hold the situation in place – status quo.  For example, I could simply be angry, call and shout at the Juno people, and demand my email be completely fixed.  All that would do is keep me upset and reinforce the situation that I don’t have my data on my email.  I could refuse to go on email.  That avoidance would ensure that I no longer had email access.  The choice that makes most sense is to first learn a new account, and then transfer the activity (in this case, address book and hopefully the ability to have incoming Juno email forwarded to the new account).  It is a slower process, but more productive.  It also gives me a good lesson in my own resistance to warranted change.

Our country has some deep situations before us.   These are situations that will inform the way our country develops and in what kind of world we will be living in.  As with small, personal situations, these large communal situations come with choices of response.  Two of these situations are the removal of their children from people seeking asylum in the United States, legally crossing through the asylum process or not, following which the children are detained in facilities of varying quality and frequently moved from one facility to another.  Parents have been deported without their children.   I would personally use stronger words for this situation; kidnapping and trafficking seem appropriate.  The other progression is broader; slowly and steadily we are seeing the strength of Congress weaken and barriers to one-man rulership come down. This might be through media mergers, executive orders upheld, gerrymandering approved, repeated untruths or half-truths being repeated until believed, or, what may or may not be more trivial, the apparent admiration of our President for two dictators, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, over the world’s other heads of government.

The responses we make to these situations make a difference.  Popular currently are petition signing and protesting in the streets. Whereas these responses are excellent for raising attention, they do not go far enough.  They do little for making actual concrete change.  There is also the issue of voting.  As we still, on the surface at least, live in a democracy, taking the time and making the effort to go to the polls and cast a vote is a stronger response.  If many people vote in the same way, it can make a difference.  Or, at least, it would be a litmus test of democracy.   Rioting in the streets would be more likely to inspire martial law and deeper personal surveillance of individuals.  If voting doesn’t work, then what?   We will have to come up with other responses, creatively, together.  We will need to learn to be truly community.

Our responses matter, whether small and personal or collective and global.   Let us pause long enough to reflect on them, to put knee-jerk responses on hold until we have had time to accomplish that examination.  Let us understand that we do indeed have choices and select those responses which are most likely to bring most benefit to ourselves and others.  We need that, especially in uncertain times.    Our world needs us, too.

Peace, Diane

From time to time – more frequently nowadays – public television stations hold fundraising marathons.  They run extended replays of favorite presentations, interspersed with requests for donation.  I watched one recently, an old favorite of mine, Peter, Paul and Mary.  What strikes me, and why I watch it over and over again, is that this is a type of music which seems to have disappeared.  Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and others created music which inspired and powered the changes it was given to their generation to accomplish.  These were not easy changes to make.  The civil rights movement, for which notably Dr. Martin Luther King and others gave their lives, the movement for peace during the time of the Vietnam War, the movement for inclusion and diversity, the movement for human rights, internationally – these were all movements birthed or pursued in the sixties and seventies.   It was the music which kept them moving forward, and which cemented the young, the movers of change, and the visionaries in one voice and surrounded that union with a protective aura difficult for divisive voices to penetrate.   When the music ceased, the movements began to fall apart.   Mary Travers and Pete Seeger have passed.  Peter and Paul persist as they can, but generally, the pulse of these artists’ music has faded.

There is a general apathy to our modern times.   Yes, there is passion and the call for change.  To each generation is given a cause, shared with those visionaries who transcend generational boundaries.  One such cause is the issue of climate change, and the necessity of restoring the Earth.  Another is economic injustice, which condemns a large section of the population to perpetual poverty.  Healthcare is an issue – including modalities which are not currently covered by insurance or priced so that the average person can afford them.  The causes of peace, civil rights and human rights are not dead.  Less politically active are those who call for a more loving world.  However, the most vocal sound most of them make seems often to be impassioned pleas for funding, to match the nearly unlimited funds the negators of those causes can expend.  The solid unity, the combined cry of the people seems to be missing, lost somewhere in the disillusionment of the times.   The music has gone; the pulse of forward change is slowed or halted.    We need our music.

John Kerry, at the funeral of Mary Travers, said of her that she “believed that songs can help make dreams into reality”.  Her life and her work attest to that.  At overnight summer camps, songs are a favorite method of uniting campers into a cooperative and mutually supportive group. During religious services, people often raise their voices in songs and chants.  Teachers who want their students to remember will put the information into song or verse.  Cheerleading chants are aimed at uniting fans in support of the team.  We are hardwired for music.  Music is all around us; why has it seemed to disappear as a motivator and sustainer of the changes that are given us to make?  Why do we no longer hear the music that connects to our souls, grabs our attention, makes a home in our memory, opens us to cooperation with our fellows and gives us a willingness to expend energy and offer the sacrifices needed to accomplish change?

There is beautiful music today.  Some of it inspires dancing.  Some of it is anesthetizing, an escape from life around us.   Some of it is soothing. lyrical.   Some of it is simply rhythmic.  Some of it is music that energizes us, gets us going in the morning.  However, beautiful and varied though it may be, it no longer unites us in the same way.  It is either entertainment, therapeutic sound, or escape.  We can enjoy it with friends or alone – sometimes it is even a bubble in which to isolate ourselves.   But, it no longer unites us to work together for a cause.   It is a missing element needed for the forward progress of the creation of a society in which our species and our planet can survive.

I am not a musician.  Other than adapting existing songs for children, I cannot create the living music we need for the times we are in.  Somewhere out there is a musician who can.  Most likely, there are numerous musicians.  Take a moment and listen to some of the music that drove the sixties and the seventies.  Notice that it is alive.  Having done that, if you are a musician, feel the call and movement of the present, and allow your creativity the freedom to bring forth in your art the pulse and motivation for what is now.   If you are not a musician, then please share with a musician you know, helping in that way to awaken us again.  If you are an organizer, an activist, look for the musicians among you.  We need our music to carry us forward, to inspire us to persist and to connect.  Such music is a song of the soul.

Peace,  Diane

Protect your root,”  emphasized my Tai Chi teacher.  By this is meant to remain centered, to figuratively have feet that are rooted in the earth so that balance cannot be disrupted.  It means to manage energy in such a way that energy which might threaten to upset the inner and/or physical balance is redirected away from one’s center, often by the smallest of precise movements.

Although it takes practice to be able to consistently do this, it is not difficult to understand the concept.  The natural instinct of most of us if we are pushed or feel attacked is to push back or counter attack.  In other words, we become as aggressive as the attacker, even as we insist it is “only” self-defense.  We are then open to the attacker’s renewed efforts, and the cycle continues until one or the other is overpowered.  Redirecting an attack using minimal energy, and refusing to engage oneself in counter attacking preserves the center, the root. The redirected attacker is the only one off balance.  It is a peaceful response, and although if attacks continue or increase, stronger redirections can be implemented, the general principle is the same.

Keeping one’s root is also an immensely useful skill for creating a fulfilled and balanced life.  A rooted or centered person is not tossed about by a sea of emotion.  He or she certainly feels, but instead of holding on to the distress the feelings create, acknowledges and feels the feelings, and then allows them to pass on, before they create an upset (loss of balance) or interfere with awareness.  Again, this is easier said than done, but the concept is easy enough to understand.  The great spiritual teachers have all, one way or another, taught forgiveness.  In order to forgive, an affront must first be acknowledged (one thinks or perceives he or she has been hurt);  then, instead of holding on to the wrong someone else has done,  the affront (or the perception of the affront) is let go.  There is no counter attack, no revenge, no playing the victim.  The affront was wrong, was acknowledged and let go.  The recipient of the “attack”  has not been thrown off balance, or out of root, and is carrying no resentment.

We are all of us interconnected.  We are connected to each other, to the plants and animals among whom we live, to the rhythms of the Earth and cosmos, even to the weather.  It is all connected. As such, the energy of each of us has a pull or push upon each other.   Is any of us unable to recite times where other people, the environment, the weather have not influenced the calm content of our centers?  These others are not enemies.  They are simply a part of our world.  We can certainly feel pushed by them or pulled by them in directions we do not wish to go.  And fighting back, returning the push or pull, succeeds only in adding more energy to the push or pull.  We become trapped in the cycle of pushing and pulling the energy.  We end up being where we do not wish to be.   If instead, we can find the tiniest of responses to simply redirect the energy, to let it flow, and to keep our center, or root, from being undermined, we are then freed from being trapped in an ongoing cycle of pushing and pulling.   We are far more likely to get where we think we want to go, and to live more contented lives as well.  The trick is in finding the tiniest of responses, and practicing until we are able to consistently use them.

Many of us are now consciously trying to create a world that is more just, more nurturing, more loving.  It would seem to me that this passively active way of responding to negative energy, whether from within us or from an outside source,  is a critical element in such a world’s formation.  It reinforces the often uttered adage that if we wish to change the world around us, we must first change ourselves.  Let us ponder this, and may each of us find the way to preserve our roots.

Peace,  Diane