The Overculture

Hello. It’s been awhile! I started this little blog during the pandemic, as a little project to give to myself to keep busy and feel creative. I was reading a lot of spiritual and self help books and I’d often take a passage that resonated with me and use it as a starting point for my blog entry. I think, looking back, a lot of my entries felt a bit like teaching. Teaching some point, some way of being or attitude, that would help me (and therefore you) be more open and aware about the world around us. I think that was fine and that my intentions were good.

I’ve had some transformations in the past couple of years since the pandemic. I completed a teaching credential program that really stretched me in ways I had not been stretched in my preceding years as a stay-at-home mom. During that time, while I excelled as a mother, I think I lost confidence in my many other competencies. Going to school, being mentored, doing projects, meeting deadlines, being VERY stressed – all of that really reminded me of just how much I can push myself and come through the other side.

I’m out of school now and due to some realities of planning and timing and obligations, I may not be able to take a teaching position just yet. So where does that leave me? Back to being a stay at home mom for the moment! However my kids are no longer needy little toddlers. They’re pre-teens and well on their way to independence and needing less and less of me! I loved school, and teaching, because it gave me such a sense of purpose! I had a goal, I was pursuing it doggedly – I was going Somewhere! Now that has all been swept away and I’m left with a bit of a vacuum.

So what am I doing with my days? Funny enough, they do tend to get filled – but they can seem to be filled with an empty Doing. Getting gas at Cosco, Target runs, meal prepping, random bursts of exercise, doom scrolling The New York Times, house cleaning (of course!), and watching Netflix sex cult documentaries (hello ‘The Vow’!). At the end of the day, when my husband and children were back at home from their days of work and school – I kept having a feeling of resentment – you’re all home, but I need more time alone, more me-time. But I’d just had an entire day alone! How much more me-time did I need?

I came to realize that in all of my trifling errands, my busy comings and goings throughout the day – I was fulfilling the cult of Doing. Clarissa Pinkola Estes – the writer of the classic mythology/psychology book ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’ – a book I adored and that shaped me greatly in my 20s – she has coined a term, the Overculture. It is this pervading pressure, this unseen force, that we are all immersed in – like fishes in water – it wants to keep us enslaved to doing and consuming. It wants us to fit into an agreed upon stance, a mode of being that never challenges the status quo. Conform. Cut yourself off from any wildness within. Most of all: do not create. Accept the pre-made forms of content that is endlessly being provided for you. Listen to the radio, watch the TV shows, consume social media, take in the 24 hour news cycle – don’t discern or discriminate – take in all of it, all the time. The underlying message: never sit with your own thoughts. Never question the deluge of messaging that comes at you. Never say, I refuse to buy something today. Never step out of the flow of obligation and doing – never simply stop and sit on the curb and watch the hideous parade of modern life march by.

Well my friends, that is exactly what I am doing. None of us can truly avoid the gooey miasma of the Overculture – in some ways, it has its uses, it keeps the world spinning, keeps capitalism going with our buying and spending. But I am doing what I can to poke and peek and see what is behind the curtain. I am trying to ‘know’ less and just give myself over to free-form being. That might be taking a different route home from school with the kids, making a new recipe, writing a quick poem, exploring what prayer means to me. I have no job right now, and I know many of you do have jobs and may think what I am getting at is the luxury of those who are being supported. And it is a luxury, I agree. But I think we can all, whether we are furiously busy and accomplished, or just standing on the sidelines for a moment, like me, whether we are raising small children, or live the single life in a well-ordered apartment – we can all take a moment or two or three in our day or maybe our more restful evenings – instead of collapsing into the numbness of television or wine with dinner – do something that answers to that great wildness within us. How does it want to express itself and how are we not listening to it? Nowadays, to create, to be an individual, to listen to deep secret yearnings – this is an act of rebellion. It says, ‘I will not be absorbed by the Overculture, I will not be steam-rolled into compliance.’

I ask you: what unquestioned ‘truths’ are you absorbing today and everyday? What are you ‘shoulding’ yourself about every chance you get? What is chasing you into productivity? What was the last thing that you bought and why did you buy it? Did it satisfy you? If so, for how long? What was the last current event you watched or read about it? Did it enrage you or placate you – but what will you do with that information now? But this is all too negative, so let’s flip it around. Did you notice the birdsong today? Did the food you eat truly nourish you? Did you tend to another’s needs today – even just a coworker – with patience and kindness, instead of resentment or obligation? Mostly, did you feel even the briefest flicker inside that you are completely unique – an utter miracle, just like a star – you are shining now, in this moment, given life in the endless stream of the cosmos – you are here! Why? Start answering that question in a way that means the most to you and do it in one little action a day, until you start seeing that to NOT do it, means you have forfeited yourself.