What to Do if You Aren't Sure What to Do
Trying to love and live in a world on fire
In many circles where I spend time, people are not sure what to do. They are worried about the state of politics, they are worried about their friends and neighbors, about wars and healthcare, about costs and jobs, and about how to have family gatherings where everyone can get along.
The problems that are before us can feel so overwhelming, sometimes it is all we can do to figure out how to make food for our family and keep doing our jobs and not have a nervous breakdown.
The first thing to know is that feeling a lot of feelings is the normal response to this situation. You are not doing something wrong. As
noted in her great piece, “How Not to Have a Breakdown While America Does,”Your nervous system doesn’t read think pieces. It doesn’t care about Supreme Court decisions or policy memos. It cares about survival. And right now, for many of us, that primal part of our brain is screaming, You are not safe. This is why you can’t focus. Why you keep doom-scrolling even though it makes you sick.
The second thing to know is that it is not your job to fix this. The Pirkei Avot, an ancient Jewish teaching from around 200 CE, includes the wise counsel, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
It can be helpful to remember that even about 1800 years ago, people were feeling overwhelmed by [gestures broadly around] all the things. Are we all called to play a role in creating a safer, healthier, more fair world? Yes. But. We need to remember that it took us a very long time to get into the predicament we are currently in and we will not see the end of it in our lifetimes.
It has always been the case that people with power and money want to keep power and money, and go to great lengths to get more power and money. Understanding that we are part of this long history can help lessen our anxiety. This is not our first rodeo, and it won’t be the last. No matter what the internet or your neighbor tells you, our calling is to find our role in this long and complicated story but your job is not to fix this.
Finally, if you are not sure what to do, feeling overwhelmed, paralyzed, hopeless, or useless, pick a thing and do that thing. You do not have to do all the things or even a bunch of them. For some of us, that “thing” is going to be “don’t die” or “don’t go insane.” That is a good thing to focus on! You are not being selfish for keeping your life together.
For some of us, we have the capacity to do a thing that is more than survival. If that is you, great! Maybe you make your neighbor cookies, maybe you donate to the local mutual aid group where someone needs help with rent. Maybe you go to a protest or call your congressperson. Maybe you list three small things that you can do in the next month to bring the world a little bit closer to how you want it to be.
This chart from
which can be found here can be super-helpful in realizing that there are lots of unique roles that people are called to play as we face life together. We need them all! For each role, there are big things and little things you can do. No act is too small!
Some will read this and protest, “But that is not enough! Everyone needs to do more! This is an emergency!” And, FOR SURE, if you can do more, I am not telling you not to. But the demand that everyone do more and do better does not inspire people to do more and do better. It mostly causes people to feel shame that they are not doing more, to feel paralyzed that they cannot do enough, and to disengage.
Writer Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us that “any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Yes, the world is burning, both literally and figuratively. It is good and right to grieve, to mourn, and to feel lots of feelings.
And, also, in the midst of this, we are called to remember that we are part of human history that is always struggling for life, for connection, for love, and for justice. We mostly get to these things not via sweeping changes and heroes, but through the everyday work of everyday people trying to hold ourselves, our families, and our communities together.
To summarize:
Feeling a lot of feelings is the normal response to this situation.
It is not your job to fix this.
Our calling is to find our role in this long and complicated story of humans trying to human.
Pick a thing and do that thing.
It is okay if the thing is just surviving.
If you have the capacity to do a thing beyond survival, that is amazing, needed, and meaningful.
A note on this space
This Substack started out as the newsletter for my psychotherapy practice, Lotus & Phoenix. Over the six months that I have been writing it, I have come to realize that it needs to be slightly different than that. While I am a psychotherapist, I am also a researcher, non-profit leader, pastor, and parent. I want to create space here to bring all of myself to this writing.
In these times, it is our calling to reconsider the old ways we have been doing things and be open to the risk of finding new and creative ways to move forward. So. That is what is happening here.
I am experimenting with what this Substack will look like. For now, you can expect that this will be a place for original essays, reflections, and sharing of resources as we all try to love and live in a world on fire. Thank you for being here.
March 30, 2025. vol. 2, issue 3