At The Edge of Tears: Reflections on the General State of the World

One of those “things” that seem to go hand in hand with being an HSP — I'm sure this is no new news to anyone — is that we tend to break into tears very easily.

Lately, I have increasingly found myself in a freame of mind where I feel like I am almost always on the edge of tears... for no particular reason.

I go through the usual “12 point check” for myself, trying to determine whether this sadness is coming from somebody else rather than myself; trying to remember whether there is some important anniversary of a tragic event that I've overlooked somehow; considering whether I got some bad news from a friend via social media... but these days I always come up blank.

This resigns me to the fact that what keeps me at the edge of tears all the time is simply the world at large. As best I can describe it these particular tears are related to a pervasive sense of frustration, exasperation, resignation, sadness, disappointment... I just can't quite come up with a word that concisely and elegantly encapsulates my mind.

Whatever it is, I just want to cry about it.

I think perhaps what I am so often tempted to weep for this is the sensation that we live in a world that on one level seems to be changing constantly and yet when we pull back the curtain and look at the underpinnings of humanity nothing has really changed.

I have wandered around on this planet for a little over 60 years now, and we still have wars and we still have famine and we still have domestic violence and we still have child abuse and we still have addiction and we still have pretty much every problem “the adults” were talking about when I was a little kid.

How can that not make a conscious and thinking person feel sad?

It's tempting to take the easy way out and make COVID-19 the scapegoat, but that really doesn't address the deeper issue. COVID is merely a symptom of a world out of balance; a world that has been out of balance for a very long time.

Not related...

I am writing as much as ever these days; this blog has just not been a venue I have been using very often. I'm sorry for that. It's not that I don't consider myself an HSP anymore (of course I'm still in HSP!), it's just that in the last few years things other than “hello, I'm an HSP!” have been taking center stage in my life.

All in all, I think that is part of the natural evolution we undergo as we familiarize ourselves with high sensitivity as an inborn trait. It's all exciting and takes center stage in our existence for a while, but there comes a time — unless we are called to teach — where we simply move on and incorporate the knowledge we have into our daily lives, without making it the only thing we're ever thinking about.

And yet? From time to time I long to slip back into that mode where “being an HSP” becomes almost like my hobby; a point of comfort I could always return to and seek refuge in whenever the world seemed a bit rough.

"Ah well, I'm a Highly Sensitive Person, so therefore..."

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit here so I guess I had better post this before I get too longwinded!

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