When I think of the word "overwhelm" I feel it means a lot of things I am wondering about. There are too many questions in my head to sort out.
I feel overwhelmed when I think of a country suffering. An entire country in famine or at war with itself. It's hard to remember that people are amazing when it hurts to know people have to suffer to make a better future.
We learn from mistakes. Mistakes made at such a large level can (and I say will...) bring people together in coming up with solutions and in consoling one another until things get better. Mistakes create strength the more those mistakes are shared. Strength in numbers can't be beat, the people who learned and grew together among the hardships will win.
I am getting rid of a lot of things right now and I am downsizing. I never cut the tags off of my washcloths so I decided they would pack down better if the tag wasn't in the way. They would also be easier to fold since tags love to curl out for some reason. Before cutting the tags, I wanted to know if there was a reason to keep it attached. The very last thing states "Avoid contact with products containing Benzoyl Peroxide." I found out Benzoyl Peroxide can bleach hair and cloth/clothes. So what is Benzoyl Peroxide? That seems impossible to find out. It seems to be chemically derived meaning it was made in a lab and it's not natural. But I don't know. Do I want to throw out the stuff I have? I have to read all the ingredients if I do. Then again, I do have to seriously purge and I'm using it as an amazing learning opportunity. All the things I have support a life in St. Louis.
I get overwhelmed from advertising. I hate advertising and I can't figure out how to be okay with it still in use. I see and hear most of the time that people don't know how to focus. Well yeah. We deal with our focus being broken all day long. Whether it's television, hulu, radio, we are watching and listening to something, then commercials appear breaking our concentration on what we were watching/doing, our brains start to wander, we might go do some dishes or get on the computer, when the commercials are done we can get back to watching the show or movie. In most of our activities we aren't given a chance to concentrate on just one aspect.
What about all the products that are touted as safe for the environment or environmentally friendly or my least favorite "for the eco-conscious consumer." Paper towels can be made from recycled content. Some are 100% recycled, some are only 30% recycled. There is FSC certified which means the forest of plants used to make the paper is sustainable but that means (sustainable in this context means) that the plants regrow quickly. Are the plants safe for the environment they are grown in? Are they taking too much out of our air that we actually need? All plants don't work the same so if it's FSC certified (which means 100% new material 0% recycled) then what plants were used to make the product? Where were they grown? Should they be grown there? We don't want to ship in new material so it should be grown locally in my opinion, but we don't want invasive plants choking out the native plants or do we? Will we learn later, in the near or very distant future, that some invasive plants helped in a good way? What might they do to help the atmosphere or the ecosystem locally? (Ecosystem includes microorganisms, animals/wildlife/birds, bacteria, grass, bushes, trees, and so on.) There is always a good aspect as well as a negative aspect. Where I get overwhelmed is wondering if Anyone else is looking into what the entire process has an impact on, what the impact is, where things were before and what changes occurred, do we continue doing what we are doing, can we try something different, maybe a small tweak, are we afraid of doing more damage so we keep doing what we're doing...
My brain used to overwhelm some people because I made them think too much. They were thinking other things and now their minds have something else to work with and they don't like that feeling of curiosity misinterpreted as a feeling of stupidity.
I'm not analytical, I just like to learn. I learned that it's important to share what is in our heads so people don't wonder and assume something else. I don't appreciate when people misinterpret my lack of reaction as anger, but since it happens I learned how to work with it. I continue to learn how to work with it. It's kind of fun.
What about the paragraphs above? Who read it, is there too little information? Too much? I don't get upset nor do I feel like a bad person for wondering what other people think and feel. In the past it has been misinterpreted as negativity and I have been told not to think this way by many people for all of my life. I now know they misinterpreted my wonder as concern, a selfish concern rather than what it actually is for me -a selfless wonder and want to know how people work. Out of those misinterpretations, I was forced to try and understand people. I feel like my concentration is broken when I have to take into account all the ways I can be misinterpreted. Hence this blog. It is here to help others understand the inner workings of at least one person, but I know I'm not the only one with so much wonder. Check out TED.com and you will find a lot of people like me.
Maybe this is what I do when change is near. Sometimes I can only feel a change coming on, sometimes I know a change is about to happen and I can only wonder what it will be like. This makes my brain look into all kinds of topics. It used to be interpreted as depression. (I was never shown emotional stability. I had to learn it on my own. It's part of the struggle I have grown from, one I dealt with since childhood, leading people and doctors to believe I'm depressed, but no one asked the right questions and I didn't have the words to explain what I needed to convey, enter frustration and sadness interpreted as depression.) I'm not sad so how can I be depressed? I'm just curious and excited in a good way and I guess this is what my brain does. And it keeps moving on to wonder...
Is this why people search out common thinkers? Some people might find solace in a church's community or a political group's gathering. Does it help some people protect themselves from being overwhelmed from too much to think about to have people around them that don't challenge them? To me, challenge is good. It breaks concentration, but we can't avoid our concentration being broken. Rather than getting upset at being challenged by the way a person thinks, why not learn to work with the differences of each person? That doesn't mean to learn how every single person works, I mean that staying calm when someone has questions rather than feeling attacked and then looking into and wondering what they mean and where they are coming from will alleviate confusion. If they can't understand you and you can't understand them, at least you were able to stay calm.
Why is calmness bad? I can't be taken advantage of if I don't care to see that someone is taking advantage of me. Neither can you. You don't have to let someone take advantage of you if you stay calm, let them say or do what they will (within reason) and move on to wonder other things or to tackle other tasks. The interaction is just a blip, a moment, a very small portion of your life. It doesn't have to speak for your entire being. Drop it and go.
I just figured out for myself once again that when I feel sad, like there is something I should be doing but I can't figure out what, when I can't settle down to watch a show, read, search for information I need to know -information to complete a task, then I might need to stop trying other things and get out the thoughts in my head so I have room in there to actually work with what I am thinking and then to move onto other things that might be of equal importance but I won't be able to work with those things until I clear my head.
I talk about reiteration a lot. We learn through doing, making mistakes, moving on, making the same mistakes reiterating what we already learned but with more knowledge so each time you make a mistake you do it from a different perspective [of your own].
When I know I need to watch a show or a documentary, but I can't because I am with someone who doesn't want to think about those things, I can remember that they will continue to break my concentration if I try to force them to do what I feel I need to do. I can (and I do, but I am making a point of one way to deal with others) look at what I need, know I can have it later and let someone else do what they need to do.
One thing that helps me is to remember that the world does not have me at it's center. Nothing needs to go my way. Everything will continue whether I have a part in it or not.
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