Push a pile down: the pile fights back

~ when relief and change become new burdens, when we fall, friends catch us...

Aug 26, 2025

Relief feels like victory.

Until the pile grows back.

Even when better days come, which they have of late, this struggle doesn’t vanish.

It shifts instead.

A new self-imposed standard, my sharper line between what matters, what can wait, and I realize that which I pretend is play and pleasure is truly work in disguise.

The harder I push, the more I need to balance all that …. is balance.

When a weight lifts, freedom should feel like a plane taking flight.

Instead, I too often make it heavier. Or choose priorities less well than I might have, so the weight grows heavier, or the stress relief doesn’t feel relieving ...

The relief of crossing big hurdles quickly faded into a ‘many things must change’ obsession. Well, “How’s that working, Mark?”

What else can be pushed down?

What still nags at me from the pile of things I’ve sworn I’d get to?

Am I doing enough? More than! But how often does it feel like enough?

Am I avoiding things I say I love by burying myself in what feels productive?

Yes, yes, yes, hiding, hiding, hiding …

A coping mechanism, yes.

Sometimes a strategy. It keeps me moving, but it’s not living.

The trick, I hope, isn’t more efficiency. It’s seeing where I fool myself, and whether that pattern helps or hurts.

That’s where other people matter.

I have a circle. OK, it’s not geometrical - more like a small moving constellation …

Not a group in any traditional sense.

They don’t meet. They don’t know each other.

But they are there.

Ears more than shoulders, words more than cushions or platitudes - they don’t flatter me, they don’t blow sunshine or kisses anywhere near my ass …

Kindness steadies me.

Their freely given care is unearned, and often well beyond what I might deserve or ever do for them in return.

In moments when it matters most, they prove the label “friend” has meaning that many well-meaning acquaintances never reach. Not that everyone doesn’t know how, but how many people are we there for? Not everyone. Not anyone. We have those who matter, and we’ve all wasted effort on lost causes.

The hard part isn’t asking for help.

And it’s risking the silence that may follow.

Nor hearing assurances without actions to follow.

That fear runs deeper than the load itself.

Looking in the mirror, I sometimes don’t like what I see: a wearier-than-before man who thinks he must carry it all. I’m not alone. Most of us, men and women, do the stoic thing, resist help or resist appearing weak or incompetent if we admit to our failures.

But I also see the truth: balance doesn’t come only from me; it comes from those who show up without being asked. Some help with heavy lifting. Some stare deeply while asking, “Are you OK?” … and they matter to me far more than I could know.

I doubt very many readers would say, ‘No, I don’t have people like that in my circle’ or ‘No, I don’t reach to help others without regard to my own well-being’ - because nearly everyone does and it seems wrong to admit it louder than a whisper, or accept it when someone said it about us.

In the end, we can sustain ourselves, but it’s the rare few of us who can tread effortlessly and not seeing their sustaining feel less like survival.
Strength alone is not survival. Strength with care is somehow the joy of life.