Overwhelming Abundance

Today was one of those days where there was simply too much.

Too much…everything.  Too much input.  Too much to do, to decide, to think about.  Too much expectation.  Too much lack of sleep.   Too many books on the “gotta read that list”, piles of “I really gotta put that away” in the house, vegetables in the produce drawer to choose from for lunch.

Too much too much too much.

Head spinning yet?  Yes, mine too.  I even developed a headache for good measure.

This made me recall some 70s commercials for Calgon water softener.  If you are old enough, you know exactly which ones.  (“Calgon, take me away!”)  If you are not, well, you missed some pretty entertaining TV advertising.

Then I thought “hey, this kind of reminds me of that poem…”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

There’s more, of course.  But I got stuck on these first four lines.  So I thought about those lines for a few moments.  Because I do that.  I laughed out loud as I realized that the old “liberal arts major: will think for food” joke was pretty appropriate here because by now there was a whole lot of thinking going on.

And I figured a snack couldn’t hurt.

A quick Google search reminded me that it was William Wordsworth who penned these lines.  (Oddly, I mentioned him here the other day.  Hmm.)  I decided to go to the bottom shelf in my library where I keep my old college lit texts and dig up Wordsworth.  (Well, not literally…but how funny was that for a second?  You know you laughed.)  As I was looking for the right book, I kept repeating those four lines in my head and I thought, “Thoreau had to love this guy.”  Finding the book, I flipped to the Wordsworth poem to see if I had written any notes.

I had indeed.

“…blah blah blah…longing for a simpler time when people were more in touch with Nature…blah blah blah…we miss the point of life.  This idea will be reiterated by Thoreau.”

I knew it!

Here’s where it gets weird.  For the last several days, I’ve been thinking about Thoreau and his ideas on living a simple life.  Maybe it’s because I have been feeling so overwhelmed.  Maybe it’s because I came across this pretty cool website on one of my ADHD excursions around the Internet.  Maybe it’s just my Inner Self telling me I need to slow down and take a minute to figure out what’s next.

I don’t believe in coincidence.  Nor do I believe in fate.  But I do sincerely believe that the world spins the way it does for some particular purpose.  And I do believe that it is up to each of us to take the clues we are presented and figure out what we might do with them to achieve that purpose, that point in life…even if we are not yet certain what our role might be.

So getting back to my too much and my simplicity.  I am not much of an outdoorswoman.  I really don’t see myself moving out to the woods to live in stark Spartan simplicity and contemplate my purpose in life.  (Sorry, Henry!)  But I do think that the concept is usable, even in today’s over-stimulating society.  I think that it is possible to make sense of the “much” that surrounds me right now.  The problem blessing is that there is so much abundance, so many possibilities in front of me that it is truly and deeply overwhelming.  The whole simply is too much to take in all at once.  I should know this from wrestling my ADHD…conquer the large task one part at a time and decide that some small part is enough.  The only way to make any sense of It All is to begin…proceed little bit by little bit.  Allow me to jump way into the deep end here and suggest that the entire process may prove not only revealing, but even meditative.  Perhaps the process of peeling away the layers of the overwhelming abundance might actually produce the desired serenity and clarity.

And my house will be more organized.  Mom will be ecstatic.

So I will choose to begin right now.  I will put the lit book back on the shelf rather than leave it here next to the computer.  I may even get crazy and grab two other stray books on the way.  If it is possible to clear a space next to the computer, then it is also possible to clear a space in the mind and the soul.

I feel better already.

Peace.