Some Thoughts on why so Many of Us are Feeling Ill at Ease Right Now

People generally dislike change. Personally, I dislike it very much, in fact I hate it. And have you noticed how wonky people have been in the last few years? The easy answer is post COVID non adjustment, but that too simple an answer.

Yes, COVID was a destabilizing force worldwide, and many are still in deep grief from losses of family and friends during that time. I lost both my parents and a few other people very dear to me (not of COVID miraculously) and I know intimately that well of deep grief. But still there is much more behind the sense of tension and worry, the impatience and crankiness so many people feel.

Why are we no longer caring for each other in the same ways we used to? Why are so many of us stressed, anxious and demanding, on edge and sad? One possible contributing factor hit me recently when I read that as a ‘generation’ of humans living on this earth during the past 20 years, we have faced more significant change in our lifetimes than every previous generation had in periods of 140 years (or more) (Fareed Zakaria, 2024 in ‘Age of Revolutions”) So was have had 7 times the rapid change in 20 years that previous humans had in their entire lifetimes. Whoa...

So this means none of our ancestors had to absorb the rapid fire societal, political, institutional and global shifts that we have had to face and it feels like too much, because it has been too much.

 When I read this data and looked it up, one of those moments where a glimmer of “Oh yes, this is true” hit my spine. I thought my own bewilderment might have been the fact I turned 60 this year and as a self-pronounced ‘old school’ person was alone in my feelings of being mystified, but it seems to be impacting us all.

The dizzying pace of change is also intensified by us all being somewhat played as pawns by bots and data mining online, fake news flows freely from the right AND the left, but mostly from players who have no investment in our well-being. Unethical journalists grab the bot news and legitimize it, and in my opinion, a for profit above all else free fall of values is cascading all around us. You only have to try to get a timely Drs appointment and much needed prescription to feel the churn of online portals and text reminders and trouble speaking to another human to secure care to see this phenomenon in action. There are many other examples of course, but the same depersonalization is all around.

There are many scholarly hypothesis of how technology and change has been impacting young people, but I believe its impacting us all, as if a sharp turn away from what we know generally makes people feel happy and secure. These things are of course if our basic physical needs are met and beyond that we humans do best when feeling meaning in our daily lives, enjoying stable social relationships, feeling agency over our lives and choices, having work and hobbies we value and giving back to others. (Gilbert 2010)

Even though I have been obsessed with these ideas, I have very little easy advice to give. Lily Tomlin's wise words come to mind, "For fast acting relief, try slowing down."

And my deep belief is that adults taking better care to be present to themselves others and their children will help immensely, but first we must recognize the "trance" we may be in. Things change, (and are changing rapidly) but human nature does not. We need connection, care, time with each other, humor, hope, a sense that what we value and believe in is meaningful, AND more compassion and curiosity for others whose beliefs are different, not condemnation and 'cancelling'. These recent ways of communicating and dividing others into 'Good and bad' groups is literally destroying what is best about us all, that we are different and can learn from each other, and we must learn to adapt, and we must adapt to survive. These are just my thoughts, I’m interested to hear yours. Lets try and heal a bit together.

We have to slow down to do this. Im generally getting better at this slowness, I have no choice, but I know I won’t see what is most important in the last phases of my life if I don’t. I am terminally optimistic and I want to believe that humans can see through what is happening to us, the forces that seek to commodify us and take away our unique view of things, what the old folks called ‘free will.”

I won’t give this up, no matter how fast packages can be delivered as I give my data away or how much cash I can accumulate by joining the crowd think.