Are You Feeling Constantly Overwhelmed?

Personal Perspective: Struggling with the pace of high-tech living.

Feeling overwhelmed is related to too many things happening at too fast a pace.
The pace of modern living can leave us feeling as though we are always lagging behind in our processing.
We can find solace in slow time cures, deliberately withdrawing ourselves from the 'race of days'.

Do you know the story about the Native-American chief and the airplane? Once upon a time, a chief lived in the Western plains, wise and deeply connected to his people’s traditions. He was invited to attend a conference on the East Coast, which was vital for his tribe’s future. He had to get there fast, at short notice and was forced to travel by plane. He did not look forward to this.

Though the chief marveled at the technology, soaring through the sky at unimaginable speeds, completely untethered from the earth, troubled him deeply. When the plane landed, the chief disembarked and went straight to the conference venue. For three days, he negotiated.

When his business was done, everyone expected him to fly home immediately. Instead, the chief withdrew to a hotel room, where he stayed for three weeks in deep meditation. Asked why he didn’t hurry home, he responded: “My body traveled too fast. Now I must wait for my soul to catch up.”

Why is this story relevant? It illustrates a very modern condition, overwhelm. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines overwhelm as the all-too-common feeling that "our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche can manage well." The technologies we have created have resulted in days in which way too many things are happening way too fast. Many of us struggle with a sense of constant urgency and a feeling that there is simply too much going on in our lives. We feel increasingly unable to keep up with the pace and volume of events.

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We could also say that our bodies and psyches can no longer catch up. We lack the time to process, marinate, digest, and ponder. As poet John O’Donohue puts it in his beautiful poem “For One Who Is Exhausted, A Blessing.”

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken in the race of days.