Just a few thoughts on the limits of being a human, and how fast life can actually go when we’re up against a wealth of problems.
Hello, and a very warm welcome to the regular spot on our site where we chat about mental health, wellbeing, feelings, how we’re doing, and things of that ilk. This is a regular weekly feature for us, and we’re well aware that not everything we write will be of use to everyone. But hopefully, over the course of this series, there’s something in there that’s useful to you.
It’s a small piece this week, but an important one to talk about.
Here’s the radical opening: you can’t be a human being without having to deal with problems. Financial problems, family problems, work problems, personal problems, health problems: they add up, and if life experience is anything to go by, one set of problems never respects the other. They don’t come in nice, easy to handle trickles. Nope, they tend to come in a glut, and someone you’ve got to muddle through.
Thing is, and it’s taken me a long, long time to learn this: you can’t solve them all. What’s more, you certainly can’t solve them all in any kind of double-quick timescale.
And perhaps the most useful thing that I’ve realised over time: you can’t do everything in a day. On top of that, the fastest you can take life is one day at a time. The big problems can only be tackled that way, the small ones too. Inevitably, that tends to lead to problems having to be broken down, and in turn that can make them a bit easier to tackle (at least in theory): I believe it was the late, great Terry Pratchett who observed that a big impossible problem is made up of lots of little possible problems (with apologies for the paraphrasing).
None of this helps when things feel like they’re piling up of course. Fully get that, and there’s only so much words on a page can do. But we’re all finite, even the people piling problems onto the pile.
No matter what expectations there are of us, we get 24 hours in the day, and ideally need to slice some of that off for sleep. And there’s little point pretending we can do more.
Everything in life, the fastest we can go is one day at a time. And I do think – as difficult as it sometimes can be – that part of self-care is recognising that. It can be frustrating, it can be unhelpful: but ultimate, it is an absolute. And I hope whatever you’re up against, your days get easier, and your problems fade.
You all take care and look after yourselves. This column returns next week.
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