Dear Universe: Can You Take it Down a Notch?

On the resulting confusion and exhaustion of living in a world of extremes

created on MidJourney by @pixiemedley

I saw The Odyssey this weekend. I walked in with an open mind and open heart. I know Christopher Nolan’s work well and I am an enormous fan. I did not walk into that theater expecting a relaxing Saturday night. I did not expect soft material. I expected intensity, and I like intensity.

I left in total overwhelm.

Not because the film failed. It succeeded completely at what it set out to do. It shocked, it awed, it took my money, and here I am writing about it, which means I'm doing exactly what the marketing department hoped I'd do. But somewhere between the previews and the credits, a question started forming that had nothing to do with Greek mythology: must we be so extreme these days? And why? To get a reaction? A raving summer blockbuster review? To simply feel something, because the absurdity we're swimming in every day has gone numb on us?

The feature hadn’t even started and I was already exhausted. One trailer after another depicting violence, killing, horror, thrill — all turned up to the extreme, past the point where it meant anything. My aunt leaned over to me and said, “Holy shit. All this and the movie hasn’t even started yet.” I was comforted to hear that she felt exactly what I was thinking.

By the time the film itself arrived, I saw that the emotional extremes I felt during the trailers were the perfectly curated warm-up. In a couple sequences — one involving a gargantuan monster, and another involving pigs that I won’t get into here — I found myself thinking that if someone wandered into that theater mid-scene, they’d assume they’d taken a wrong turn into a horror movie. Real fright. Real gore. Not an epic. Not an on-screen honor to classic mythology.

The Odyssey did everything it was built to do. What it didn't do was honor the story it was telling. Afterward, my aunt said the thing that's stayed with me since: she felt like she was watching something from a different time — not "back then," but "in the future." It was too extreme and too visually futuristic to carry the depth and intellect of a historic tale. Truly, I think we were both a little stunned from it all.

I keep coming back to that. Because I don't think this is really about one movie, or even about Hollywood, though I'll admit the thought crossed my mind that an entertainment industry still grossly and overwhelmingly run by white men might have some interest in turning the volume up past the point where anyone else's voice can be heard. Just sayin’.

In an incredibly trite “life imitates art” commentary, what I felt coming out of The Odyssey reflects what I feel in my life right now. In my real life, and in the lives of my many loved ones, we are living at the extremes. It seems like nearly everyone is unsettled in some way, going through something major — not just one hard thing, but a pile-on of really hard career changes, moves, marriages ending, marriages beginning, houses collapsing, lifelong friends dying, health issues disrupting us and demanding that we push more, try harder, hold on another day.

We are all being asked, all at once, to leap into versions of ourselves we don't know yet and are not ready for.

And I wonder — with that much real change already asking everything of us, is it healthy to also be marinating in a manufactured world of extremes? Where do we protect the reserves? If there are any, that is?

It would be easy to blame the usual suspects. Our phones, controlling us like puppets. AI, giving us permission to stop thinking for ourselves. Social media, forcing a one-upmanship that has everyone reaching past the edge of comfort just to be seen. All of that might be true. But every epic story (of which life is one, isn’t it?) has a villain and it makes less sense to name it than it does to learn how to defeat it.

We still have our consciousness, and we still have choice. Which is just another way of saying we still have our humanity. And I want that to be our superpower. With it, we have the extreme privilege to choose human connection over violence, over competition, over horror, every single time something asks us to pick.

I know, I know… That choice doesn’t make headlines. It’s not a summer blockbuster.

I'm not asking for a world without Christopher Nolan movies. Never. I'm asking whether that monster needed to be quite so big, quite so cannibalistic, quite so grotesque, to land the same emotional gut-punch. My guess is no. My guess is the quieter version would have hit equally well because it would have allowed our creative brains to fill in gaps in a way that would be allowed to be personal to each of us, rather than shove extremities (which can also be triggers) down our throats.

I'm in month ten of a twelve-month sabbatical, and I continue my quest for stillness, reflection, and a time-out. But we live in a world that hands out sharp edges and extremes at every turn, which are requiring me to fight daily and intentionally for the ability to hear myself think.

I’ve spent some time over the last several weeks feeling like I need to start this sabbatical all over. That things have become so noisy and extreme during a time that was meant to be quiet and simple. But now — in my belief that everything happens for a reason, and my continual quest to understand what the universe is trying to teach me — I think that this current chaos might be trying to help me.

I’ve been told by coaches, psychics, therapists, friends, and family that I plan too much. Although this planning has provided me with many amazing things (like, the ability to take a year off from full-time work, for example), it has been too rigid to allow space for a so-called cosmic interference.

The thing that I think the universe is saying to me — clearly in an extreme bellow rather than a delicate whisper — is that sometimes the noise and the chaos does not allow us to plan ahead, and there is a gift in relenting that control. As much as I want to spend my time dreaming and scheming the plot of my hero’s journey where I come out of corporate burnout to find myself living a happily-ever-after, I can’t plan that dream ending. At least not right now. One day at time it has to be. And I need to accept — and dare I say, enjoy — that.

Universe, I promise to learn and live this lesson, but I do have one request: Can you please take it down a notch?

Can you fill less of the highs and the lows for us so that we can hear your kind whispers and find your easter eggs? The thing is, I know you are looking out for me, but your constant screaming makes me mistake volume for meaning, and what my human nature really needs right now is an intensity in the form of quiet and stillness and peace. Please and Thank You.

Live with Love. Be Unexpected. 😘