Existential Multitasking & Why Life Is So Challenging In This Weird New World

Even though many things are better than ever.

Photo by Ruben Hanssen on Unsplash

Hi friend,

When I first heard the term “existential multitasking,” I was blown away by its accuracy. I thought spiritual teacher Saniel Bonder was a genius for coming up with it.

That was about a decade ago.

Now, the term feels even more poignant.

The state of the world in 2024

If things felt heated in 2014, they are on fire in 2024. Staying centered in 2024 is a bit like trying to balance on an exercise ball—on one leg, and while juggling with fire.

You have probably seen this in your own life, in your own communities:

People going off the rails—in so many different directions. Leaders losing the plot—even those you looked to for guidance. Entire communities coming apart—at the seams, and everywhere else.

This has certainly been my experience. In 2019, I was part of five wonderful communities (two in-person, three virtual). I felt like all my community needs were fulfilled.

Well, here’s my current state of friendship and community:

• My best friend in the area passed away in 2020. She was in her early 30s, and such a beautiful soul.

• Out of five communities I was in, one got turned into a shitshow, one lost its heart, one flatlined, and another one is on life support.

• Thankfully, at least my martial arts community is still standing. Perhaps focusing on physical resilience breeds other forms of resilience?

I am not sharing any of this to be negative. Just to be transparent on struggles I’m dealing with in my own life. Overall, my life is good. That “good” isn’t evenly spread—some areas of my life are so good they are almost miraculous, and others, not so much.

Of course, that disparity has always been the case—I’m not new to existential multitasking. It’s just that the last few years have turned up the heat significantly.

Why things feel so hard at the moment—it’s all about energy

We are now playing the game on a whole different level of difficulty. At least energetically speaking.

In fact, many feelings—for instance, the ongoing sense of doom so many people experience—can only be explained in terms of energy.

Energetically speaking, the world is going through a lot. We can see more and more clearly what isn’t working… the corruption, the greed, the rot. (I wrote about this in my article “Light Exposes Everything.”)

It was always there, it was just never this visible before. So, we mistakenly think it has never been worse… and ignore most of human history. (I, for one, am glad that “entertainment” no longer consists of people killing each other in the Colosseum while an empire is built on the backs of enslaved people. Give me 2024 CE over 27 CE any day of the week.)

For while things feel hard, life conditions themselves continue to improve for many people worldwide. For instance, here’s what the wonderful organization Fix the News just reported:

“… the WHO and UNICEF released a new report on global access to drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools. You need to dig a little - but around halfway through they reveal that between 2015 and 2023, global access to clean drinking water in schools increased from 66% to 77%, basic sanitation increased from 68% to 78%, and basic hygiene rose from 58% to 67%.

This is a staggering achievement. In actual numbers, it means that well over 200 million schoolchildren have gained access to improved water, sanitation, or hygiene services in the last eight years, a period of time which includes the severe disruptions of the pandemic. If you can find a single story about this from any other news organisation in the world, let us know. We tried and failed.”

(I wrote about the news and how it’s impacting us in my article “It’s Time to Choose Hope Over Fear.”)

Two things can be true simultaneously in our lives:

• things have never been better, and

• things have never felt harder.

Basically, what almost every new parent experiences is also what we are currently going through as a collective: things are better but they feel worse.

Existential multitasking.

Stress test

There is one upside to all the intensity we have been going through: the last few years have essentially been one massive stress test (or, dare we say, crash test?).

What got stress-tested? Everything! Our systems. Our relationships. Our beliefs. Our communities.

The stress test exposed the fault lines that were already there.

And its results are in. We can see it all around us.

Now, we know what is resilient and what isn’t. And the truth is that the communities that fell apart in my life just weren’t built on solid-enough foundations. They could withstand a bit of wind. They couldn’t withstand a storm.

What’s solid lasts, or it can be rebuilt. Case in point: when I visited my home country last winter, I had a wonderful reunion with old friends. We met on New Year’s Day. Outside. On the beach. In Northern Germany. With everyone’s small kids. Oh, and it wasn’t just cold, it was raining, too.

Nonetheless, we stayed. For hours. In the cold (and, later, rain). To reconnect.

Perhaps that’s a good litmus test for friendships and communities: would you be willing to do that for them? Would they be willing to do that for you?

But I digress. Back to the results of the stress test we have gotten in the last few years. In my case, it revealed that most of my communities had been built on quicksand. It also shows that some areas of my life have the durability of the pyramids of Giza. For instance, my marriage is stronger than ever.

What stress test results have you gotten?

You might like to consider the following areas of life and rank them on a scale of 1-10 (the higher the score, the more resilient the area):

• personal and spiritual growth

• community and friendships,

• work and career/business,

• money and finances,

• fitness and health,

• house and family,

• romance and fun.

If there are other areas that feel important to you, please consider them as well.

Whatever results you are getting, know that none of this is a reflection of your worth as a person. It just shows you where you are vulnerable, and where you are resilient. When you have that data, you can decide what to do with it.

We are under a lot of pressure.

But we can also rise to the occasion.

70,000 years ago, humanity almost vanished. This might have been due to a volcano eruption (and subsequent ice age), a catastrophic spread of disease, or other factors. Whatever the reason, humanity at once point consisted of just a few thousand individuals.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to go through that? And how much strength and courage it must have taken to have babies in the midst of all that?

Well, the brave individuals who gave birth in those horrific conditions are not only our saviors, they are also our ancestors. In other words, strength and courage is part of our DNA.

And, honestly, compared to what they went through, this is nothing. Please excuse me while I learn how to stand on an exercise ball on one leg, while juggling with fire.

On second thought, I’ll just meditate instead.

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Warmly,
Louise