the question
Oct. 20th, 2009 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiIf much of my extended period of despair and anguish could be condensed, it would be simply, "How do I live?" It's so much more complex, complexifying, than that simple sentence would suggest. I simply don't know.
There are so many I care about, personally as well as categorically, so many injustices I want to work to righting, so many gigantic looming problems that demand to be addressed, and I simply cannot get to them all. I can't escape the feeling of so much that needs doing, as well as the feeling that not enough people are doing enough, and that leads to a crazy, hyperactive sort of desperation; at the end of that road I catch glimpses of exhaustion and defeat, and I don't want to go there.
I'm not doing enough, and what I am doing, I'm not doing well enough. There are people I would quite literally fight for that I don't know how to help (recently, I'm showing up on that list myself), and there are the untold billions I love as a class that I can't find a way to reach, to help at all.
But today, I saw deer on the path at lunch, an adult and two young. I turned away at first, noisily retreating, hoping they'd go on about their business without being afraid of me, but when I turned back, they were still there, and I felt like my heart expanded with compassion and wonder. I shuffled through the leaves loudly as I approached, wanting to give them plenty of warning, all the while mumbling under my breath, "Don't be afraid. I don't mean you any harm," knowing it would have no effect. The young deer ran away first, but the adult held position, longer than it seemed to take the younger ones to get away, before bounding down the hill. I caught glimpses of them moving through the brush as I walked out and back to work.
And I don't know how to hold moments like that close to me while I feel so perpetually overwhelmed. The beauty and wonder seem to make the despair sharper, cut more deeply. I don't think it's supposed to work like that.
I think I need to learn to cry.
There are so many I care about, personally as well as categorically, so many injustices I want to work to righting, so many gigantic looming problems that demand to be addressed, and I simply cannot get to them all. I can't escape the feeling of so much that needs doing, as well as the feeling that not enough people are doing enough, and that leads to a crazy, hyperactive sort of desperation; at the end of that road I catch glimpses of exhaustion and defeat, and I don't want to go there.
I'm not doing enough, and what I am doing, I'm not doing well enough. There are people I would quite literally fight for that I don't know how to help (recently, I'm showing up on that list myself), and there are the untold billions I love as a class that I can't find a way to reach, to help at all.
But today, I saw deer on the path at lunch, an adult and two young. I turned away at first, noisily retreating, hoping they'd go on about their business without being afraid of me, but when I turned back, they were still there, and I felt like my heart expanded with compassion and wonder. I shuffled through the leaves loudly as I approached, wanting to give them plenty of warning, all the while mumbling under my breath, "Don't be afraid. I don't mean you any harm," knowing it would have no effect. The young deer ran away first, but the adult held position, longer than it seemed to take the younger ones to get away, before bounding down the hill. I caught glimpses of them moving through the brush as I walked out and back to work.
And I don't know how to hold moments like that close to me while I feel so perpetually overwhelmed. The beauty and wonder seem to make the despair sharper, cut more deeply. I don't think it's supposed to work like that.
I think I need to learn to cry.
