Frenzy, Guilt & Grandiosity
Burn-out or something else?
On March 23rd, I started writing on Substack on an impulse—to publish a time-sensitive piece of satire called "The 70 Million Old People's March." And, without intending to, I found myself posting daily. It felt good. The ideas kept popping in my head … until they didn't.
Part of me shrugged and thought, okay, the well is dry. Another part shrieked, "You're shirking your duty!"
I think I have a lot of company with this pattern. How many of us get desperate at the thought that we aren't doing enough to fight for democracy? We aren't calling enough, we aren't demonstrating enough, we, we, we— But if we're honest, we should be saying "I."
When this happens, I am suffering from the notion that "I alone must solve this" or at least "My actions are critical." Or conversely, I can fall into despair because I know, "I can't solve this." "Nothing will be adequate."
This is grandiosity. When it happens, I am forgetting that I'm just not that important. And if I take a rest, or run dry, or just can't and escape to crime TV or a funny novel, the world will not fall apart.
If I can accept my smallness, there is relief. If I can accept that what I can do is "good enough" (to quote British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who in 1953 came up with the phrase "good enough mother"), then my grandiosity dies a quick death—requiescat in pace— until it resurrects itself and again I have to remember I'm merely one in a herd of many.
Isn't this what we want of our government? Our leaders? Our president? Awareness of the whole? Democracy?
E pluribus unum … "out of many, one"
Postscript
Discovering the librarian-run and fact-checked Substack group How to Resist has helped enormously, giving me pictures of how many of us make up this herd of individuals fighting for democracy. Particularly uplifting is their recent Profiles in Resistance article with numerous photos of older people all over the country doing what I'm doing. It is impossible for grandiosity to take over when you see this.
Post-Postscript
And here’s an enlightening photo of a plant. This is my elephant ears (see May 4th post) three days after it started to reach for the sun. You'll notice the water droplet. The elephant ear plant is sweating—a process called guttation, when plants expel excess water. I over-watered. But the elephant ears is smart and is fixing the problem. See? I don't have to be an expert all the time. Sometimes a plant … or a tired body knows best.
Betsy Robinson is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright. She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.