Dark Clouds – Photo: L. Weikel

Overwhelm

I’m feeling it.

Is it just me?

I feel as though I’ve been amazingly fortunate, the past 345 days or so, to almost always discover something to write about. At least something that was not akin to what my husband Karl has more than once very unhelpfully suggested to me as he headed to bed, leaving me on the couch with laptop at the ready:

“Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy. Jack is a very good boy…”

(That’s a reference to Stephen King’s The Shining, in case you either had no idea what I meant by that or thought ‘Jack Nicholson,’ yet couldn’t quite place it.)

Stuck

Yeah, I’m feeling that, too. But no, I’m drawn to explore the overwhelm  a bit further.

While I try not to talk politics a lot in my posts, sometimes the state of our country seeps into my writing. It’s hard to ignore. It’s hard to pretend that what’s happening at the highest levels of our government isn’t having a ripple effect both worldwide and on the most personal of levels.

Worldwide

On the world stage, the stunning selfishness and corruption has resulted in us betraying our allies, which of course – aside from becoming an immediate cause of death for many – will lead to others being wary of teaming up with us in the future. We’re no longer the sure thing. We’re no longer the country that aspires to be the world leader in all things just, admirable, innovative, and courageous.

We’ve lost our moral authority. (And yes, I know; we’ve not been perfect by any means. But overall? We’ve been a beacon of hope, light, and freedom to the world.

I’m feeling a sense of overwhelming despair that this is no longer true.

There’s a naïve part of me that chirps, “But as soon as we prove that we will not tolerate such blatant corruption, that our system of checks and balances will curb the egregious excesses and abuses of power, surely the rest of the world will ‘come back’ to working with us?!”

As each day unfolds, I’m feeling a despair in the pit of my self. I’m starting to despair that we can recover our stature. And I am not the despairing type. Yet…

Our Personal Microcosms

On the most personal of levels, I’m also feeling the overwhelm that’s blanketing all of us. Every day we’re confronted with a fire hose of revelations of how more and more and more ‘norms’ are just flagrantly ignored.

Norms – ways of behaving in a civil society that we, as a culture, take for granted and therefore do not need to legislate (i.e., we don’t need to create laws or rules that explicitly state what is right or wrong) – create a fundamental security. They’re sort of the ‘everybody knows what a red light or a stop sign means’ coupled with ‘we can rely on people stopping at these.’

I’m not saying that we, either personally or culturally, should become slaves to norms. I’m almost always behind a little well-intentioned effort to shake things up now and again.

It’s the Relentlessness

But the constant, day in and day out, flagrant and deliberate flaunting of norms is debilitating to our personal psyches. It’s wearing us all out. Even the people who chant inane tropes at rallies are, if they pay attention to their lives and their mental, emotional, and physical health, being worn the hell out by the constant barrage of uncertainty and unkindness, disrespect and despair.

Norms of polite society are disintegrating. People are starting, more and more, to just do what they want. There’s a growing disregard for simply doing the right thing for the right thing’s sake.

Yikes; this got dark.

I’m hoping this ‘overwhelm’ will pass quickly. It’s beating the hell out of my normally optimistic and idealistic nature. And while I suspect many of you are feeling it too, I do have to wonder: Is it just me?

I’ll do my best to bring a better game tomorrow.

(T-765)