Sun Days on Orcas | The curse of too much

I have a family member who is ailing because she cared too much, took on too much, did too much, and eventually neglected the basics she needed too much. She’s the type that if she wasn’t always completely stressed, she felt she wasn’t doing enough. Guilt drove her into the ground. She was taken to the doctor, who said her organs were on the brink of shutting down because she wasn’t getting enough food, enough water, enough sleep, enough rest.

A few weeks before this, I had been thinking a lot about my own life. All of our lives. I, too, had gotten myself involved in too much. Not driven by guilt for not doing enough, but because I enjoyed it all. Tutoring students, helping people write books, washing dishes for a youth group, driving a man to the ferry each week, writing articles, managing a blog and a book, photographing people, preparing for an art show, substitute teaching for one school, feeling bad that I didn’t have enough time left to substitute for the other school I had been hired by, and the list goes on.

I always want to make sure I walk each day and I’m present and available to my kids after school too. All pretty benign stuff. And enjoyable. Not one of them large or time-consuming, but put all together, life had gotten full. All of a sudden, there was always something I was doing. I like feeling needed, and I also like making sure I have plenty of projects in the dark winter months so that I don’t fixate on the permagray outside. Loving the fullness, I was skipping meals for the sake of working on projects and getting from one thing to another. I wasn’t sure at night if I’d had any water all day.

Then my husband had a bike accident. Everything was put on pause for ten days in the Bellingham hospital. He could barely walk unassisted when we left, and within a day or two of returning home he was slowly walking, fixing his own food, and managing his daily life. He wanted to be self-sufficient, so I went back to all my stuff.

A few months went by and I began looking around. I often check myself when I am in an Ecclesiastes kind of mood (“What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?…The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”).

I tend to come back to a feeling that this modern life is not quite what my human-ness needs. A house full of stuff to be dusted. A computer full of emails, buying opportunities, entertainment options. A phone full of so many photos that I have to pay for additional storage because I don’t yet have enough interest to pare them down. Bags of expensive groceries that I have no idea how to grow myself. We have so much wonderful opportunity that we fill our lives to the brim – with things, with goals, with lessons, with achievements, with obligations, with entrepreneurial enterprises, with investing, with service, with travel, with education, with degrees, with art, with communicating. All good things. Pair that with the fact that we can accomplish most of these myriad, varied tasks on a computer right in our hand or at our kitchen table. It’s an amazing tool that allows us to do anything, go anywhere, and make our dreams into realities. But sometimes, in an Ecclesiastes kind of mood, I think that to grow my own food all day outside with the birds and squirrels and then go to sleep worn out is truly what my brain and body need.

The constant thought I always come back to doesn’t jibe with the culture of modern life. It isn’t that I need more, it’s that I need less. I want to be free to go where the wind blows, not manage inanimate objects in a house. I want to have ample time to talk and laugh with people.

The curse of having too much in these modern times is the constant threat of getting out of balance. I am big on simplifying, dejunking, wiping the slate clean. So I have begun paring down. I am doing so many good, satisfying things, but it’s too much. I want to learn vicariously from my family member’s trials and get back into balance.

This will be the last article for this column for a while. I love this column, just as I love all the other things I’ve taken on, but I need to be available to a husband who has now had three separate concussions. To a family member who lives far away and may need assistance. To my older son who is graduating from high school in three weeks and going off to college in September. To my younger son, who needs a present mother for the summer. To myself, to eat good meals and have time to watch the birds.

I thank you wholeheartedly, theOrcasonian and all of you who have read Sun Days. I do not like goodbyes, and this is not a goodbye. We will see where the wind blows, and perhaps my articles will pop back up on your screen sometime in the coming months. Who knows. For now, enjoy this lovely spring weather, and I hope to pass you on my daily walk along Crescent Beach.