yearning for overwhelm

a meditation on presence, longing, passion and fuel

These days, I find myself seeking overwhelm. These days, I find myself yearning for overwhelm in feelings such as passion, exuberance, connectedness, intelligence, clarity, and guttural impulses. These days, a mere inkling, a shock on the tip of my finger, or brilliance on the tip of my tongue feels largely discounted from the full price, dare I say, inadequate. These days, a whisper is not to be heard unless it is a roar. These days, if the feeling isn’t consuming my every thought, controlling my every move, it feels useless. These days, I have a feeling to feel more or nothing at all. These days, I am yearning for overwhelm.

And so I’ve been seeking knowledge. I’ve been reading memoirs, autobiographies, and poetry from great authors. I’ve been listening to podcasts that fuel my soul. I’ve been trying to find out what inspires me, what lights me up, what I’m good at.

A quote that stuck out to me and one I find myself returning and relating to is from Joan Didion’s “Blue Nights”:

“For everything there is a season. ‘I’d miss having the seasons, people from New York’ like to say by way of indiciating the extra-ordinary pride they take in not living in Southern California. In fact Southern California does have seasons: it has for example ‘fire season’ or ‘the season when the fire comes,’ and it also has ‘the season when the rain comes,’ but such Southern California seasons, arriving as they do inexorably suggest the passage of time. Those other seasons, the ones so prized on the East Coast, do. Seasons in Southern California suggest violence, but not necessarily death. Seasons in New York-the relentless dropping of the leaves, the steady darkening of the days, the blue nights themselves-suggest only death.”

Ironically, my favorite saying in the last couple of months has been, "There is never a season for everything." By this, I mean that life moves in cycles. Every summer, there is winter. For every high, a low. For every spark of inspiration, a season of depletion. “It’s not my season to be inspired. It’s not my season to be energetically driven. It’s not my season to know what I want and how to get there. This is the season of learning. This is the season of resting. This is the season of sifting through all of my experiences and making something of them, making sense of them,” I think.

One of my favorite podcasts, Soul Gum by Victoria Hutchins, speaks on the rush of passionate creativity that sometimes surges within you. She describes being overtaken by an idea so intensely that you can practically hear your nerves buzzing with the urgency to bring it to life.

And so I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for that spark to set something ablaze in me. I’ve been waiting in grocery store lines, at red lights, through the sound of my alarm in the morning. And still, nothing. The absence of excitement sets off another alarm inside me. “What if the feeling never finds me again? What if I was never meant to create something with purpose and passion? What if I simply will be missed?” I think.

Or worse, what if I miss it?

What if the moment passes by me and my fingers don’t land on the keys fast enough? The thought terrifies me. And yet, I remember—I was the one who wished to feel everything or nothing at all.

And then the other day, I saw a woman searching for change in her coin purse. She moved with a quiet urgency, glancing over her shoulder as if determined to have herself sorted before the bus arrived. My parents taught me never to stare, but I couldn’t look away. Was she anxious to have the correct fare? Was she confident that she did, simply counting the exact total? Or maybe, what she was searching for had no cost at all.

For a moment, I considered rolling down my window to offer her mine. But would that be an insult? Would it mean I thought less of her? That I assumed she was unsteady, unstable, unsure? Before I could decide, she looked up, and our eyes met. Beneath them, our smiles grew, while above, they shrunk.

It was human. It was kind. It was steady, stable, sure.

I think she found what she was looking for. I think, in some way, we both did.

That night, I went home and wrote a letter to my future self:

I know in the future there is a me where, whether she gets triggered by old photo memories, a palm tree, or a taco truck, or whether she is remembering the days of yoga, youth, and yearning, she is “wishing we enjoyed it more.” She is saying, “We didn’t know we had it so good.” And to that, I need to tell her that we did.

She needs to know that waking up in this home, every single morning, felt just as fresh as waking up on vacation. I need her to understand that not a single sunset, raindrop, or the delicate shadow of fog over the city skyline went unnoticed. Every moment mattered.

She needs to know that my heart was content every time my roommates and I shared space, even on the days when I was socially inept. Every cup of coffee and mug of tea was cherished and made with the taste of pure love.

The music and the laughter that seeped through my bedroom window each night slowly became less of a bother and more of a treasure. A treasure to signify friends, family, fun. To the city, the beach, and the desert. To the traffic, the chaos, and the weather. To everyone I met along the way, to me in the here and now.

I loved. I soaked. I cherished. I enjoyed. I cried. I laughed. I reveled.

You don’t have to worry. I do know how good I have it. How good we had it.

And more of Joan Didion’s words came back to me:

“I find many engraved invitations to the weddings of people who are no longer married. I find many mass cards from the funerals of people whose faces I no longer remember. In theory these mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact, they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.” —Joan Didion, Blue Nights

I do not want to realize, years from now, that I spent this time waiting—waiting for passion, for clarity, for certainty—when all along, I could have simply lived.

As I write this, the sky glows orange. I realize there is no perfect moment to feel it all at once. No lightning strike of inspiration, no explosive surge of clarity. There is only now, and what I choose to do with it. Whether or not I feel overwhelmed by passion or clarity, there is always something worthy to hold onto, something to appreciate in its quiet, steady rhythm. Maybe the greatest lesson is not in seeking to “feel it all,” but in realizing that everything I’ve experienced, every ordinary moment, has already been enough.

Maybe passion lives within every sunset and sunrise-

not just in the ones that burn the brightest.