WHEN YOU REACH SATURATION.
Some days, okay most days, this world feels like I’m living in a wild multiverse where all the radio stations are on, turned up and running at the same time. I feel exhausted just typing that. There’s a constant barrage of information coming at us 24/7. And I say 24/7 because I’m convinced it’s still streaming while we’re asleep, filtering through our subconscious somehow. There must be some kind of downloading and sorting happening during those hours of supposed renewal.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to process and catalogue the exorbitant amount of input during my waking hours. Geez, it is an ongoing, laborious task. The ticker tape of news headlines talking over the bajillion podcasts talking over the endless opinions talking over the running commentary that never really stops. Even when I try to turn it down or tune it out, it somehow finds me. Sometimes I feel like my mind is impossibly trying to hold it all. The strange part is I can be sitting completely still with my coffee and it feels like static in my head. Like an electric vibration humming through my body. My nervous system has never been great at pretending noise isn’t loud. No wonder I love to be at home so much. It’s one of the places where I can shut things down and enjoy a bit of silence.
I’ve noticed there’s a very specific kind of tired that sleep just can’t touch. It’s not body tired and not exactly mind tired either. It’s more like saturation tired. The point when you’ve reached what seems like full capacity and have as much as you want to hold. The kind of tired you might feel after talking to too many people in a day. This person explaining something. Another reacting to the topic du jour. Someone correcting everyone else. The person who just talks incessantly. And the person beside them making predictions about an unpredictable future, which I suppose is one way we try to soothe ourselves.
All of it comes at us faster than we can humanly process or so it seems. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts don’t even get to finish before the next stream of information cuts in and heads my way. It can feel like we’re living in a constant state of interrupted thinking. Like our attention is being hijacked. Honestly, I think it is. I actually heard the other day that our attention is becoming our most precious human resource.
And I don’t think we were made to have this much coming at us all the time. Not this many opinions, updates, dings, pings and “urgent” demands before breakfast. It’s like standing in the middle of a crowded room where everyone is talking and somehow it feels like every voice is directed at you. Not because anyone is doing anything wrong. Just because this is the world we now live in. A world of saturation.
I acknowledge not everyone feels or experiences it like this. Some people actually seem to thrive on the noise and chaos. We’re all wired differently, with different nervous systems and different thresholds. I have to think on some level there’s a cost for them too though.
And yes, as I’m writing this, I realize the irony. This reflection too is more information. Another voice. Another read added to the pile. I don’t write because I have answers. I’m still trying to figure out how to hold all the noise and manage all the incoming boxes myself. I only write as a reflection. And maybe that’s how I find my way through it. Or how I hear myself or how I make sense of it. Maybe it’s all of it. I don’t really know.
xx,
Michel