The Overlapping Calamities Within: The Paradox
Don't you love the paradox? The cold, frigid paralysis as you watch your bills go overdue, appointments go unattended, assignments go missing. Life just spirals, growing further out of our orbit by the moment. Out of our grasp. And yet we don't lift a finger to stop the death march. We do nothing. We watched so many people do nothing to help us when we needed them! None of them did anything! And yet look at me now. Look at us falling, burning in a flurry of unutilized potential. We do for ourselves, just as much as we watched them do for us.
It's not that there is no fire. Of course there is fire! Of course there is will. But this machine it seems, does not run on will. There's a gap in the synapse somewhere. I can feel the gears turning. I can feel an engine somewhere inside us groaning, growing hotter. And yet it cannot move these hands to make a phone call. It cannot spur the mind to write a paper. It can't even help us remember why we walked into a room seconds after entering.
Nevertheless, fire is present. Plans, ideations! The image is completely clear. I just can't take it out of my mind and make it reality. So instead, we do the things we can. We spend hours recording census data on random counties. We write possible guest lists and seating charts for every holiday that we may host in the future. We create a map of the farm we dream of owning one day, plotting the orchard that we have yet to start on the land we do not have. We write in our journal for hours. We scroll social media all evening and into the morning hours. We play countless games of solitaire. We are exceptional at remembering what should be forgotten. We are the authority on procrastination. We are at an advanced level when it comes to doing literally EVERYTHING except what needs to be done.
This is the paradox. This is the grey. This is the overlap.