When the World Is On Fire and Life Keeps Moving
Why our brains were never designed for the world we're asking them to navigate.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."
— Viktor Frankl
The alarm goes off before the sun has fully risen.
Get up.
Work out.
Take the vitamins.
Make the coffee.
The first news notification appears.
Curse.
Laugh.
Try not to cry in front of the kids.
The phone buzzes again.
Work email.
Then a family member liking yesterday's Instagram story.
More coffee.
Poke at the kids.
Wait...
Was the T-Mobile bill due today?
Log into the meeting.
Make sure the kids are doing the things.
Another meeting.
Finally, a chance to get some work done.
The group text starts buzzing.
One child needs to be here.
Another needs to be there.
The phone lights up again.
It's your partner.
The distance is hard.
Missing them is harder.
Another buzz.
Your recently widowed father.
"Did the cats get fed?"
Another email.
Pick up the kids.
Stop at the grocery store.
When—and how—did groceries get this expensive?
Home.
Dinner.
Homework.
Calendar.
Wait...
There's a war unfolding on the other side of the world.
Did I brush my teeth tonight?
Another notification.
Don't forget tomorrow.
Sigh.
And somehow, in the middle of all of it, we're expected to function normally.
As though we're machines.
As though we're supporting characters in our own lives instead of human beings carrying far more than anyone can see.
Some mornings feel less like living and more like surviving the next notification.
Last week, I wrote about grief.
About stepping away from work.
About walking alongside my mom through hospice and finding my way back after she passed away.
But grief isn't actually what I've been thinking about most.
I've been thinking about expectation.
Specifically, the expectation that we're supposed to continue functioning normally while life around us changes in extraordinary ways.
Because that's what so many of us are doing.
Some of us are grieving.
Some are caring for aging parents.
Some are raising children in a world that feels increasingly uncertain.
Some are quietly navigating divorce, layoffs, illness, burnout, financial stress, or loneliness.
Some are watching wars unfold in real time from the phones in their pockets.
And somehow...
We're still expected to answer emails.
Show up to work.
Help with homework.
Pay the bills.
Smile through meetings.
Remember birthdays.
Return text messages.
Plan dinner.
Keep going.
The world doesn't pause because our lives become difficult.
But perhaps that doesn't mean we're supposed to pretend nothing has changed.
The Weight We Can't See
We Were Never Meant to Carry This Much
One of the greatest myths of modern life is that we should be able to carry it all.
Our careers.
Our families.
Our finances.
Our grief.
Our relationships.
Our responsibilities.
Our communities.
Our futures.
And somehow carry them all well.
But humans didn't evolve this way.
For most of human history, survival depended on one another.
Anthropologists have long understood humans to be one of the most cooperative species on Earth. We survived not because individuals could shoulder every burden alone, but because communities shared the work of raising children, caring for elders, gathering food, solving problems, and grieving together. Cooperation wasn't simply kindness—it was survival.
The image many of us have inherited of the fiercely independent individual is surprisingly modern.
Our biology, however, still reflects something much older.
It reflects a world where belonging mattered more than self-sufficiency.
Where asking for help wasn't weakness.
It was expected.
Maybe that's why so many of us feel exhausted.
Not because we're incapable.
But because we're trying to meet modern expectations with a nervous system that evolved for shared burdens.
And it isn't just that we're carrying everything alone.
We're also carrying more than any generation before us.
Information once traveled slowly.
News unfolded over days, weeks, and sometimes months.
Even after newspapers, radio, and television, there were natural pauses between events.
Time to process.
Time to recover.
Time to simply be human.
Today...
Everything arrives immediately.
Breaking news.
Text messages.
Work emails.
Social media.
Group chats.
Videos from halfway around the world.
Before we've finished our first cup of coffee, many of us have already absorbed more information than previous generations encountered in days.
The pace of the world changed.
Our biology didn't.
Our stress response evolved to help us survive immediate threats—a dangerous animal, a violent storm, conflict within the group. It wasn't designed to process an endless stream of distant crises, competing demands, and constant notifications. Researchers often describe this as an evolutionary mismatch: the modern world has changed far more quickly than the human nervous system evolved to handle.
Maybe we're measuring ourselves against expectations no human brain was ever designed to meet.
Maybe we're not failing.
Maybe we're overloaded.
The Invisible Weight We Carry
Most of what we carry can't be seen.
Grief.
Political uncertainty.
Financial pressure.
Climate anxiety.
Social comparison.
Trauma.
Caregiving.
Parenting.
Relationship stress.
Health concerns.
Breaking news.
Our own expectations.
Other people's expectations.
Questions about who we are.
Questions about who we're becoming.
None of these experiences arrive one at a time.
Our nervous system doesn't organize them into separate categories.
It carries them together.
And over time...
The weight accumulates.
Not because we're weak.
Because that's how human beings are wired.
The problem is that invisible burdens are difficult to measure.
No one looks at a grieving parent and says,
"Of course answering that email feels harder today."
No one tells the college student trying to finish finals while worrying about the future of the world,
"It makes sense that your concentration isn't what it normally is."
No one reminds the professional caring for an aging parent, raising children, and trying to stay financially afloat that their brain is doing far more work than anyone else can see.
Instead, we often measure ourselves against the version of ourselves that existed before we were carrying so much.
And when we inevitably fall short...
We assume something is wrong with us.
Why We Keep Calling Ourselves Lazy
When life becomes overwhelming, many of us don't become compassionate.
We become critical.
We tell ourselves:
"I'm lazy."
"I'm procrastinating."
"I have no motivation."
"I just need to try harder."
We've become remarkably good at turning overload into personal failure.
We assume the problem is discipline.
Organization.
Motivation.
Character.
But what if our brains are responding exactly the way human brains respond under chronic stress?
Neuroscience has shown that prolonged stress changes the way the brain allocates its resources. When the nervous system perceives ongoing threat, it naturally prioritizes survival over long-term planning.
Planning becomes harder.
Decision-making slows.
Working memory becomes less reliable.
Emotional regulation requires more effort.
The very skills we rely on every day—planning ahead, beginning tasks, remembering details, organizing our lives—are among the first to become more difficult when we're carrying too much for too long.
This isn't a character flaw.
It's biology.
Executive functioning doesn't disappear because we stop caring.
It becomes harder because our brains are trying to protect us while carrying more than they were ever designed to hold.
Maybe we aren't broken.
Maybe we're overwhelmed.
There is a difference.
And perhaps that's one of the most compassionate truths we can learn.
Because once we stop interpreting overload as inadequacy...
We can begin responding with curiosity instead of criticism.
Young People Feel This First
I was seventeen during the attacks on September 11th.
I watched the second plane hit before school.
Then I watched the towers fall from my first-period Government class.
Those images have never left me.
It was the first time my generation experienced history unfolding in real time.
For many of us, it fundamentally changed how safe the world felt.
Today's young people don't experience that once.
They experience it every day.
Wars.
Natural disasters.
School shootings.
Political unrest.
Human rights debates.
Climate disasters.
Economic uncertainty.
All arriving through the same device they use to text their friends.
Adolescence has always been a season of becoming.
At the same time, young people are trying to answer some of life's biggest questions.
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
What kind of future am I building?
Now imagine trying to answer those questions while carrying unprecedented access to humanity's hardest moments every single day.
The internet has given us unprecedented access to the world.
It has also given the world unprecedented access to our nervous systems.
Every notification asks for our attention.
Every headline asks for our emotional energy.
Every algorithm competes to keep us engaged.
For previous generations, many of history's most difficult moments arrived through the evening news or the morning paper.
Today's young people often watch them unfold live.
Sometimes before adults even know they're happening.
The same device that connects them to friends also delivers tragedy, conflict, fear, comparison, and uncertainty—all within the span of a few minutes.
We are asking developing nervous systems to make sense of a world that rarely gives them a chance to look away.
What does growing up look like when the whole world fits in your pocket?
Perhaps the harder question is this:
What does it feel like to become yourself while carrying the weight of the world at the same time?
Adults Aren't Immune Either
It's tempting to believe adulthood prepares us for this.
It doesn't.
Parents carry invisible emotional labor.
Teachers navigate systems that often ask more than they can reasonably give.
Healthcare workers absorb impossible decisions every day.
College students inherit uncertainty while being told they're responsible for the future.
Professionals balance economic instability, caregiving, relationships, and the constant pressure to produce.
Different people carry different burdens.
The nervous system doesn't rank them.
It simply carries them.
Everyone you meet is shouldering something you can't see.
Yet we continue building systems that rarely acknowledge that reality.
We celebrate the people who keep going.
The employees who never miss work.
The parents who always show up.
The students who push through.
The caregivers who somehow manage it all.
But rarely do we stop to ask what it cost them to keep moving.
Sometimes what looks like resilience from the outside is actually survival.
Sometimes what looks like strength is exhaustion that hasn't had permission to rest.
And sometimes what looks like "doing just fine" is simply someone who has become incredibly skilled at carrying more than anyone realizes.
We Have Confused Adaptation with Capacity
For so long, we've measured resilience by how much a person can carry.
More work.
More responsibility.
More pressure.
More expectations.
More bad news.
More uncertainty.
We celebrate the people who never slow down.
The ones who somehow manage it all.
The parents who keep showing up.
The students who keep producing.
The professionals who never miss a deadline.
The caregivers who never ask for help.
We call them resilient.
But perhaps we've misunderstood what we're actually seeing.
Human beings are remarkably adaptable.
We can survive extraordinary circumstances.
We can continue showing up long after we think we have nothing left to give.
We can endure seasons we never imagined we'd survive.
But adaptation isn't the same thing as capacity.
Just because we can keep moving doesn't mean we were ever meant to carry that weight indefinitely.
I think we've confused the two.
We've mistaken survival for wellness.
Endurance for healing.
Functioning for flourishing.
We tell ourselves,
"I got through it."
"I handled it."
"I made it."
And maybe all of those things are true.
But they don't answer another, equally important question.
What did it cost you to keep going?
Because our nervous systems keep score.
They remember the sleepless nights.
The uncertainty.
The grief.
The constant vigilance.
The impossible decisions.
The years we spent believing that asking for help meant we had somehow failed.
Long after life appears to return to normal, our bodies often continue carrying what our minds have tried to leave behind.
Maybe resilience isn't about learning to carry more.
Maybe resilience begins with recognizing when we've been carrying too much for too long.
A Moment of Perspective
For most of human history, a difficult day might have meant illness in the family, conflict within the community, uncertainty about the next meal, or a dangerous journey home.
Those hardships were real.
But they were also immediate.
Today, before we've finished our morning coffee, we may have already checked our bank account, answered work emails, compared ourselves to strangers online, worried about our children, read headlines from across the globe, and absorbed news of tragedy happening thousands of miles away.
None of those experiences exist in isolation.
Our nervous systems carry them together.
Perhaps it's worth asking whether we're expecting ourselves to perform under conditions no previous generation has ever had to navigate.
Not because our lives are objectively harder than those who came before us.
But because the pace, volume, and immediacy of what we're asked to process has changed dramatically.
The world asks more of us than it once did.
Yet many of us continue expecting our brains to respond as though nothing has changed.
Maybe We've Been Asking the Wrong Question
For years we've asked:
How do I become more productive?
Maybe that's not the first question.
Maybe the first question is:
What has my nervous system been carrying?
Instead of asking:
"What's wrong with me?"
What if we asked:
What am I carrying?
And once we've learned to ask it of ourselves...
Perhaps we begin asking it of the people we love.
Our children.
Our students.
Our coworkers.
Our partners.
Our parents.
And then we extend it beyond that.
The stranger standing beside us in the grocery store.
The person who cut us off in traffic.
The colleague who seems distracted.
The teenager who can't seem to get started.
Even the people we struggle to understand.
Because behavior rarely exists in a vacuum.
It almost always has a story.
The world isn't going to slow down.
The headlines won't stop.
The bills won't disappear.
Our calendars won't suddenly become empty.
Life will continue asking things of us.
But maybe we can stop expecting ourselves to function as though none of it matters.
Compassion isn't pretending life is easy.
It isn't lowering the bar.
It's acknowledging the reality we're living inside before deciding what comes next.
That isn't giving up.
It's beginning from a place of truth.
Carry This With You
The world doesn't pause because our lives change.
That doesn't mean we're supposed to pretend nothing happened.
Be gentle with yourself.
Not because life is easy.
Not because the expectations have disappeared.
But because your nervous system has been listening to every part of your story—even the parts no one else can see.
Understanding that isn't an excuse.
It's the beginning of compassion.
And compassion is often where healing begins.
Before You Go
This week, I want to leave you with a different question.
Not:
How can I keep carrying more?
But:
What has my nervous system been carrying while I've been trying to keep going?
Because before we ask ourselves to do more...
We should understand what we're already holding.
If your brain is responding to everything you've been carrying...
What would change if you stopped judging yourself and started understanding yourself?
If this essay resonated with you...
Thank you for spending a few moments here.
My hope is that these reflections help make sense of the things we carry—grief, growth, identity, executive functioning, education, and the realities of being human in an increasingly complex world.
If you'd like to continue the conversation, I invite you to subscribe to future essays, connect with me on LinkedIn, or explore my work through Custom Path Coaching.
Until next time...
Be gentle with yourself.
Further Reading
This essay was informed by research in anthropology, neuroscience, developmental psychology, and executive functioning. If you'd like to explore these ideas further, here are a few excellent starting points:
