Being Here – Day 56
Being Here – Poem Day 56
Poem — When I feel responsible for everyone – Reflecting
Yesterday’s poem worked directly with caregiving urgency —
the reflex to step in, to fix, to carry.
Today’s poem stays closer to the inner experience of that responsibility.
For some, noticing needs happens quickly.
Attention moves outward almost automatically.
Responsibility can feel less like choice
and more like calibration.
If someone is unsettled,
the body registers it.
If something might go wrong,
the mind prepares.
Over time, usefulness can become stabilising.
Being needed can feel like belonging.
In this light, over-responsibility is not simply overextension.
It may be a meaningful adaptation —
a way of maintaining connection, preventing harm, or securing place.
Today’s poem does not ask you to step back.
It does not question your care.
It simply names what this pattern can feel like from the inside.
Pause.
If anything lingers after listening, you might try one small thing — only if it feels helpful.
Let your back rest fully against the chair for a moment.
Nothing else is required.
Warmly,
Per
Poem – When I feel responsible for everyone – Reflecting
There are moments when attention turns outward almost automatically. Who is struggling. Who might need support. What could be done to help.
Caring can feel instinctive. A way of staying connected. A way of making sense of your place among others.
Often, this responsiveness has a history. Times when stepping in mattered.
Moments when help wasn’t optional. Experiences where being needed created belonging.
Over time, concern can become constant. The body stays alert to signals of distress. Rest feels conditional, earned only once everyone else is settled.
From the inside, this can feel purposeful. Responsible. Even loving.
And yet, there may be a quiet cost. A sense of being stretched thin. Of carrying more than was ever meant to be carried.
It can be hard to tell where care ends and responsibility begins. Harder still to imagine letting go without something important being lost.
But caring deeply does not require holding everything together. Responsibility does not have to be total in order to be real.
Recognising this doesn’t loosen the habit. It doesn’t remove the pull to help.
It simply allows the experience of feeling responsible for everyone to be seen with more honesty, as an expression of care that may have grown beyond its original bounds.
