People are driving me Crazy

Dear Complaint Department,

This time of the year there’s so many people out and about. The lines are long everywhere there’s no parking spots and I’m terrible at parking. People are cranky (including me) and I’m just trying to go out and get the necessities! It takes twice as long just to go anywhere and people are driving crazy!

- overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

I won’t tell you to embrace the magic of the season, but rather the magic of necessities. You are indeed among the living, what a nightmare. You are also indeed living among the dead. Not in the proverbial ghost haunting of tv’s and movies where a spooky figure appears in moody, smoky windows but rather how every space you inhabit has been inhabited by many who are no longer present. Every presence is filled in by absence and every absence is filled in by a rich inheritance of presence.

What does this have to do with anything?

You walk the aisles of Costco where many have walked before you and who are no longer living.

It’s all so solemn and sacred and also it’s all so stupid and noisy and overwhelming and everyone is everywhere and we aren’t our best selves so much of the time.

There is another realm here. It’s just beyond the veil. It’s just right there waiting for us to notice the whole host of ghosts who are present only in their absence.

Maybe it’s just noticing all the roadside memorials marking where someone died with flowers and notes and crosses.

Maybe it’s noticing how everything is a memorial.

Maybe it’s bringing flowers to the all crowded spaces and saying a prayer of goodbye and thank you and why and help.

Feeling overwhelmed can be its own abundance of riches.

It’s also a bit awful—like all good things.

—with tenderness and love for your own noisy mind and crowded spaces

The Complaint Department