the bottom of a hole is the back of a cave is the top of a hill
It seems to me one of the great burdens of existence is just how many levels of living there are. And many, if not all levels of living, can feel massive. Stultifying marriages, sick pets, resistant children, the vanishing rainforest, genocide, war, a beloved with a diagnosis. A conversation you don’t want to have but need to. A body that won’t give you what you want from it. The weight of absence.
Nothing is sequential. Everything keeps arriving.
It can be tempting, then, to want to flatten life. To take all of life’s fractal pains and joys and smooth them into one seemingly manageable level. Take one thing at a time. It’s alluring, wanting life like an assembly line that we can control.
It’s the co-existence of life’s levels that’s difficult, the overwhelming fact of having to contend with everything at once. And it’s what often leaves people, in the midst of legitimate crisis, milling about, unsure what to do, where to look, what to ask for or articulate.