I’ve noted how often people express feeling overwhelmed. It reminds me of how people said a decade ago that they were busy. How 20 years ago, a common refrain was feeling fine.
I’ve been noting where humans at a family level, community level, society level, and nation level are not in harmony with the flora, fauna, waterways, seasons and other wild cycles. Years ago, I learned how some county employees in parks preferred to use RoundUp weed killer because it had a longer lasting impact on keeping the weeds and other rogue plants out of the soil for longer than mowing or the more intense, exhaustive, and cumbersome tasks of weeding while other county employees preferred the mower. Mow or spray, those were the options. And each had their own ripple effects and externalities, which are also in the eye of the beholder.
Now, when I see a patch of rogue grasses 7 feet tall I recognise how that’s one patch of land where there’s been less human attention and wherewithal to tend to the soil, the seeds within it, and the flora that springs from below. The weeds are an indicator of time and energy not put there. The weeds in my yard and along the highway are signs of neglect from the humans who see, or at least pass by, those grasses everyday as we rush onto some other destination. Seeing this symbol of being out-of-harmony, I’m also noticing that a tributary to overwhelm is having a sense of responsibility for the conditions that cause people to feel overwhelmed. This responsibility to me masquerades as control, believing that people are in control of things, places, or people that are out-of-control. Yet, I wonder if those overwhelming forces are people, places, or things that we cannot control. That the honest truth is that we wield little or no power over that.
