Work in progress

Who is responsible? {spoiler alert: We all are.}

Is that really THE question?



Aren't we all a work in progress? Learning about what to worry about? Deciding how many worries we can juggle all at once? Putting perfectly worryable things to the side to concentrate on other worryable things. Knowing they all hit back real hard when we can't re-initiate the worry quick enough.

And isn't that the rub? Quick enough.

Its why we have other people to handle our medical care. Because while I have learned quite a bit about random medical things like genetic disorders, allergies and sensitivities, vision, dentistry, viruses, bacteria, human development, Aspergers, diabetes, and hypoglycemia ... I am still not a Dr of medicine.

Its why we have accountants and financial planners, insurance, restaurants (fast and slow), plumbers, mechanics, realtors, lawyers, movers, etc. Because we can't all be experts at all these things all the time. But slowly, over time, we can learn what we need to know but perhaps not all that we want to know, or even know what we should know. These things change. Sometimes rapidly. Sometimes without us ever realizing. Right up to the edge of "until we need to". Why?

We were distracted. Focused on something else. Juggling and prioritizing. Responsible for something else. And then it all changes. You get hit with something very hard. Time to refocus. Time to learn. Assuming you are still alive. Assuming you think something as hard hitting as this is likely again. Because, really, who wants to get hit like that again? I might be consumed by the worry and not function at all. I have to put that worryable thing down now. Maybe even put it away. I just cant do all the worry all the time.

This is but ONE perspective.

I leave you with this quote from Dr. Oliver Sacks^1:

"I almost never speak to people in the street. But some years ago, there was a lunar eclipse, and I went outside to view it with my little 20x telescope. Everyone else on the busy sidewalk seemed oblivious to the extraordinary celestial happening above them, so I stopped people, saying, “Look! Look what’s happening to the moon!” and pressing my telescope into their hands. People were taken aback at being approached in this way, but, intrigued by my manifestly innocent enthusiasm, they raised the telescope to their eyes, “wowed,” and handed it back. “Hey, man, thanks for letting me look at that,” or “Gee, thanks for showing me.”

^1: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/21/best-books-2015/