This week I want to talk to you about the extremes we often feel in our day-to-day life.
These days feeling overwhelmed can easily become a daily occurrence.
There are family commitments, housework commitments, work commitments, social media, emails… the list goes on and on and I’m betting you’ve often felt like it’s all just too much.
At the other end of the scale, we have the feeling of being completely underwhelmed –
Perhaps you organised an evening out to see a show, or went to an event, planning and organising and looking forward to it for days, weeks or even months…
And then when you actually get there, it’s underwhelming.
You feel cheated out of the time it took you to organise and attend.
In the film comedy Ten Things I Hate About You (1999), the character Chastity Church asks, “I know you can be underwhelmed and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”
The answer is Yes.
Contemporary writers sometimes use whelm to denote a middle stage between underwhelm and overwhelm.
The feeling that, like baby bear’s porridge, things are not too much or not enough; they’re just right?
Not so happy you feel manic; not so sad you feel miserable; just about fine.
Whelmed.
With so much going on in our lives, it’s easy to lose track of that feeling.
Often we can find we’re feeling a weird combination of too much and not enough at the same time.
There’s too much going on in my life, so many balls in the air.
But none of it actually feels like it’s fulfilling me in any way.
That’s a rubbish way to try and get through life, isn’t it?
I think we should all begin aiming to feel more whelmed.
Middle of the road; calm; centred; satisfied.
Whelmed…
What do you think?
