Everything is Connected (In a Giant Tangled Knot)

welcome to the existential hairball 🐈

A reader wrote to me recently:

I'm currently reflecting on my own feelings of powerlessness to "fix" things. Incremental change is positive, and yet I'm struggling not to feel crushed under the weight of it all. Particularly when I start to think through how all these issues are interconnected (e.g., colonialism feeds racism, which feeds eugenics, which feeds homophobia, which feeds patriarchy, which feeds extractivism, which feeds capitalism, which feeds climate catastrophe, etc.), it is incredibly overwhelming. Sometimes I'm successful at remembering that the interconnection of these threads means that taking action in a small way in one sphere will reverberate more broadly across other spheres of influence, and sometimes I'm very much not.

I read their words and felt my whole body nod in recognition. Yes. That. The great knot of it all.

We are told that everything is connected and it’s meant to be a comfort.

A spiritual balm.

A reminder that our actions matter.

That pulling one thread of justice sends ripples across the whole web.

But sometimes, that very same truth feels like a curse.

Because when everything is connected, where do you even begin?

Pull one thread, and the knot tightens. Try to fix one thing and ten more rise up from the underbrush.

You start with plastic straws and find yourself swimming in the legacy of empire.

You attend a local zoning meeting and end up knee-deep in redlining and land theft.

You advocate for queer rights and run headfirst into centuries of colonized religion and carceral punishment.

And it’s not that we mind the depth, it’s just that it makes everything feel so heavy.

The matted, messy, no-way-out-ness of it.

the blessing of the web

Still, it is true. Everything is connected.

In Mahāyāna Buddhism, there’s a metaphor called Indra’s Net: a vast cosmic web, with a jewel at every crossing point. Each jewel reflects all the others. Every movement, every breath, every heartbreak reverberates through the entire net.

Nothing exists in isolation. Not a single thing.

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

This is the radiant hope inside the knot. If everything is entangled, then no act is too small.

If you whisper a blessing in one part of the forest, a seed might sprout in another.

If you speak truth in your own voice, someone you’ll never meet may find the courage to do the same.

You may never see it, but connection ensures that.

Joanna Macy calls this The Work That Reconnects. She teaches that our grief is not a signal of defeat but of deep participation.

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”

The ache of grief is the ache of relationship.

You do not mourn what you do not love.

And you do not love what you are not bound to.

So if the sorrow feels unbearable some days, it’s because your soul has not accepted disconnection as the price of survival.

You are still in the net.

the burden of the knot

But, that same entanglement, the one that makes small acts matter, can also feel paralyzing.

because it means there are no easy wins.

Every issue bleeds into every other. The deeper you look, the more systems you find wrapped around each other like ivy around a crumbling wall.

This is what philosopher Edgar Morin described as the polycrisis: not just multiple crises happening at once, but crises that feed and multiply each other in unpredictable ways.

It's not just that things are bad, it's that the badness is entangled. And that means there are no clean fixes. No isolated solutions. Just… systems all the way down.

So, when your brain spirals from climate change to colonialism to patriarchy to capitalism and back again, that’s not you being dramatic, that is literally (unfortunately) the truth.

a different kind of participation

“Life did not take over the planet by combat, but by networking.” – Lynn Margulis (evolutionary theorist, biologist, science author, educator, and science popularizer)

We are trained to fight. To problem-solve. To charge forward with a plan and a checklist. But nature offers another model.

Consider the mycelial networks that live beneath the soil: fungi that thread together entire forests.

These underground webs share nutrients, carry warning signals, and adapt constantly to change. They’re not linear. They’re not tidy.

And, they are utterly indispensable.

The forest is healthy because of its entanglement.

Maybe we are not meant to “solve” the knot.

Maybe we are meant to live inside it.

Sustain it. Loosen the places that need air. Bind the places that need support. Compost the rest.

Maybe we don’t need to be the architect of the whole web. Maybe we just need to keep weaving.

ecological belonging

Communities, like ecosystems, thrive when each part does what it is made to do.

A mushroom does not try to photosynthesize.

A river does not try to hold roots.

A tree doesn’t digest the detritus at its feet.

And yet, the forest flourishes, because everyone plays their part.

We burn out when we try to be the entire ecosystem. When we believe we must hold the whole thing together.

But sustainability is not about doing everything. It is about knowing your ecological niche.

What thread are you here to tend?

This space is better when more people speak up. You’re welcome to join the conversation, however big or small your thoughts feel.

something like a prayer

If you, like my reader, are feeling crushed by the everything-ness of it all, this is what I want to say:

You are not broken.

You are awake.

The tangled feeling means you are inside the web.

You are not a spectator, you are a participant.

Some days the web will be a hammock, gently holding you and transferring every little movement you make in exactly the right way, in ripples spanning time and space.

And some days it will be an existential hairball entangling all your limbs, holding you hostage the more you try to free yourself.

There is no escaping the web. You are in it, my friend.

You are not obligated to complete the work..

and neither are you free to abandon it. 🤍

I read every reply. You don’t need to say anything “profound”—just write what’s true for you. Hit 'reply' or send me a message below.

Further reading -

the season of small things

you don't have to be healed to begin

Silver Buckshot