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What the heck is going on?
I don’t read the Bible, but I think somewhere in there it talks about plagues and things like that. This feels like it.
Politics, wars, social media—everything I look at makes me want to hide inside a sensory deprivation tank, if I could only afford one.
Are we watching everything fall apart right in front of us? I feel like we all realize it, and we’re looking at each other, waiting for someone to say, “No, everything is okay.” But no, everything is not okay. So we go to the next person, hoping for that reassurance.
We are a persistent species.
I do freak out quite often looking at the state of the world. It’s easy to blame our struggles on outside forces—things like politics, media, billionaires, and the list goes on.
I see my circle of friends and acquaintances shrinking down to the size of a dime, and I know it’s not just about differing opinions. There’s something deeper at play—exhaustion, overwhelm, and disconnection.
We’ve drunk the Kool-Aid that apart, we are better because being together is too problematic.
Somehow, we’ve become a society of people who distrust others. And that is not who we are.
At the same time, we’ve disconnected not only from people but also from the small things in life that bring us joy—going for walks, cooking a meal, playing with pets, reading a book, or spending quality time with the people we care about.
Everyone is too busy or too damn tired to do what’s supposed to make us feel better. Isn’t that such a conundrum?
I know this is overwhelming. I live it every day. Perhaps the only thing we can do today is notice how far we’ve drifted from meaningful living. That, right there, is progress. It’s a step in the right direction.
The next step is to start building bridges—connecting things, connecting people, connecting words in a crossword, connecting your feet to the ground, connecting to your breath, connecting to a friend. We’ve become so disconnected from ourselves and our sense of identity that sometimes it’s hard to recognize ourselves in the mirror. We’ve also become so weary of people.
We need both. We need to connect to ourselves, and we need good people in our lives.
I feel disillusioned quite often. I try to do my part as much as I can, and sometimes I wonder if my part has any effect in the larger scheme of things. But I’ve learned not to care about that answer. I’ve learned just to do my part whenever I can.
So perhaps if more and more of us start doing what we can—looking at our lives, noticing when we’ve drifted away, and coming back to a sense of fulfillment—maybe that’s all we can do.
And who knows? Maybe that’s all that needs to be done.
~
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