The last several months, it’s been hard to escape futility. I try not to spend a lot of time wallowing in darkness because I find it doesn’t work out well for me. But if I’m being honest, there have been plenty of days when it’s been hard to update this blog.
And that’s because as much as I don’t like to wallow in despair myself, I like to perpetuate it or to spread it to other people even less.
Et Tu, Futility? #
The last several months have been really tough. Because even when I’m able to be patient and be okay with waiting for however long it takes the new normal to get here, to find a bubble of “okay”-ness within a lot of Things Are Not Okay, I can’t go anywhere — not even virtually, which is really the only way I see people these days — without bumping into people who are extremely frustrated.
Who are not okay.
And sometimes they lash out in that frustration.
At me, at other people, at whoever just happens to be there.
And when that happens, no matter what I do, it will never be enough. I can’t snap my fingers and make things somewhat normal again. The old normal.
Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can say a few things that are momentarily distracting. Entertaining, perhaps even semi-comforting.
But I know there’s a long time yet. And even what little good I can do won’t last. Not in the way I’d like it to. I’d prefer to be providing trail rations, the hardy stuff that’ll get people through the tougher roads. And there are days when I feel like the best I can do is spin up some cotton candy.
I am used to comforting myself. That’s an old pain, the idea that I can’t rely on other people be there to reassure me. But it’s a pain I’m used to.
This new feeling is much harder to deal with: The feeling that no matter what I do, it probably won’t be enough to really help other people.
The best I can do is to keep trying to push through the futility — all the while hoping that my fear is wrong. And that I’m still managing to do a little good, even so.
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