The movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (EEAAO) is one that’s really stuck with me. A true “full sensory experience”, it captures the sheer overwhelm of trying to live a life of meaning in our current time. The title broadcasts its essence well: the subject is literally everything, the location is everywhere in the broadest multi-verse sense possible, and the time frame is all at once. I previously wrote a bit about the “everything everywhere all at once-ness” of life in a post titled “TFW My Circle of Concern Is Actually The Entire Universe”, but I wanted to press further into what I’ve found helpful in navigating this overwhelming reality: rather than retreating or giving up, a narrowing of focus with an intentional orientation toward the good.
As the film progresses these themes reach a chaotic fever pitch until finally at the climactic point of the final act my favorite character — Waymond Wang, the husband and father in the film who reads throughout as weak, bumbling and lost — stands up and gives his desperate plea. Appropriately split across time and space between two different versions of Waymond, the speech collapses that extreme expanse into a weirdly split but singular moment where one man speaks his truth. I’ll link the full speech below, but there is one particular line I come back to over and over again:
When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything. — Waymond Wang
This line is particularly resonant because sometimes “accepting the things I cannot change” can feel like giving up. When I choose to orient myself to the good, I’m not being naive, I’m choosing a posture that determines my next meaningful action. In other parts of the speech Waymond implores everyone to be kind. An appeal to kindness as a substitute for action can be a baseless platitude, but it’s a powerful place to start when I’m facing the uncertainty of our chaotic reality. Kindness and goodness set the compass, everything else flows out of that direction.
Enter Evelyn, Waymond’s wife. Throughout the film she has been trying to fight the entire universe. She is exhausted. She hears Waymond’s appeal and she makes a clear choice, moving from a fight against everything to an active decision to be with and for the people and relationships right in front of her. Her husband Waymond and all of the complications of their life together. Her father Gong Gong, and the connected clash of culture and his fear of change. Her daughter Joy, and with Joy her girlfriend Becky: full acceptance of who she is, as she is. She has gone from “everything everywhere all at once” to “these relationships, right here, right now.” A far cry from giving up, this is a moment of reorientation and newly chosen purpose.
So what does this look like for me? Overwhelmed by the absolute cacophony of information that cannot be turned off, I stop and I choose my orientation. I will be kind. I will look for the good. I start with what is right in front of me. Slowly the volume gets turned down, and the sensory overload subsides. With a reoriented compass and a clear focus I know my next step and I can take it.
What’s the one thing right in front of me? Two weeks ago it was the team I manage. We got the news that another beloved coworker was leaving. I changed some team plans and made space to talk about it. Our team planning session was tweaked to accommodate a needed conversation, and we dropped some less urgent things to make space for it. Whatever it may be it can’t be everything. It has to be the one thing. The next thing.
When I’m lost in the 24 hour news cycle that brings every THERE right into my phone screen it’s easy to lose a sense of place. I start with HERE. Sometimes that means this physical house, and the attention it needs so it actually functions as a home. Sometimes here is the neighborhood I walk around every day. Or the city that is currently feeling like it’s under siege.
Every Wednesday it’s the couch where I sit with my youngest brother and we watch old episodes of “The Wire” together so we have an excuse to catch up and remember how good it is to be brothers. In those moments we don’t need everywhere. We need right here. Actual presence. So many of the people I love no longer live in close proximity to me, but I can make time and space to be with the ones that are close, while they are close.
When information is constantly flooding us, it can be easy to lose the present in a flood of past regret and anxieties about the future. I choose right now. Yesterday it was a campus tour at GMU with my daughter who is a high school senior. She wants to study film; really she wants to make art that says something worth saying. I choose to say “yes and amen” to that by going, and asking questions, and alleviating fears. I choose it by being with her and being for her, every step of the way. I can’t control what happens next. Whether she gets in or not. What happens with her art. The shape her future takes. I can control how I show up.
In the chaotic everything everywhere all at once-ness of life, it can be hard not to just collapse into inaction. Hard not to give up. For me, I’ve found that starting with my orientation of kindness and goodness, and then an intentional narrowing of my circle of focus to one thing, right here, right now, gets me unstuck and moving again. Practically it feels like a move from paralyzing inaction in the face of overwhelm to calmly doing the next thing, one step at a time.
Have a little bit of Waymond Wang. Let him convince you that it starts with being kind.
© 2026 Tommy O'Keefe