Overwhelmed- A portrait of indecisiveness
Are you overwhelmed yet? With all the information swirling around you.
I am. Overwhelmed. Paralyzed by the utter impossibility of making sense of all the information I am confronted with on a daily basis.
Every day for me begins with some amount of hope. A hope to learn something I never knew before. A hope to have a conversation I’ve never had before. To encounter an idea I’ve never considered before. Essentially, to have a moment of insight which will change my perspective on reality. Just something that will finally persuade me to say- “This is what I believe, and thus this is how I will act”. But then the hope slowly dissipates. Voices within me reiterate that I cannot and will not be able to know everything. And that every bit of information I acquire is then useless unless seen in the context of the whole. But I can’t know the whole. I can’t see the whole. So what must I do with this information. This knowledge that is so prized by those who go to such lengths to attain it. Who laugh when questioned about something they seem so certain about. I hate that laugh. That laugh which seems to say, “Ah you’re so naive. If only you had all this information, all these experiences, all this wisdom, you’d be able to see the truth.” I don’t believe them. Their conceit was a turn-off anyway.
I’m surprised that we even have opinions. And viewpoints. And beliefs. Even if we can’t know all the information out there, we at least know that there’s a lot of it. Really, a lot. And yet we confidently have debates and arguments, write articles and opinion pieces, offering our brilliantly “researched” perspectives. Based on the miniscule amounts of knowledge we have gleaned from the miniscule percentage of the human population which we have interacted with. It’s embarrassing. But then what am I implying? That we shouldn’t put our ideas out there at all? No, that would be ridiculous. But we could end every sentence of ours with a question mark? With a “maybe”? A disclaimer? An “I don’t really know what the hell I’m talking about”? An “I’m just someone who thinks he knows something about something because he read a thousand books and wrote a dissertation”?
It bothers me that we are able to go about our lives without simply slumping to the ground and clutching our heads in the realization that we are deceiving ourselves. That we are simply pretending to have all the evidence we need to hold that worldview of ours in place. My worldview crumbles every single day. And I diligently try to piece it back, try to add something new to it, something that will make it sturdier. But I am the destroyer of my worldview. And I am the creator of it. So it doesn’t really matter how strong it is. Because I will find a way to dismantle it. With a single thought. My eternal Brahmastra.
How can I not be overwhelmed. Or am I just finding an excuse to not act? Surely, were we to confront the flimsiness of our intellectual efforts, we wouldn’t find the motivation to act? So if we must act, we must be doing so with the awareness that we act partly in ignorance? Yes? Okay?
