How to Live in a Dreadful World
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My sister called me on Monday and asked if I was okay because my newsletter “felt stressy” last week.
I had every intention this week of being light and even fluffy. Then she called me on Wednesday with fear, anxiety, and dread saying, “I don’t know how you’re going to write about this in your newsletter”. No light and fluffy.
Today feels more like a WTF-Friday than a TGIF. Sadly, I’ve written about gun violence in our schools before and what we can do. I’ve also written about despair here and here.
But, I read in the local school district’s newsletter on Wednesday about the best practices for leadership during stressful times. One of the points it said was that when you are going to create a message, make sure 2/3rds of it is optimistic. Here is my attempt at that.
TOOLS
Ironically, I turned to social media today to capture what other people are saying and talking about. While social media itself is ruinous in so many ways, when you want to feel validated for your emotions, it’s a pretty good tool at serving up an algorithm for your appetite of choosing.
I’d like to share some of my favorites from this week, if, with a good recommendation, you have kept your distance from news and media this week and missed some of these. If you cried and wallowed and felt hopeless, enraged, and scared, I see you, I am you. So are lots and lots of people across the globe. If podcasts are more your thing, I highly suggest crying and raging alongside this one.
GRATITUDE
I want to figure out a way, maybe even just tools, to continue to smile, be hopeful, and grateful in a world that feels increasingly suffocating. I want all of us to identify a way forward that is better than before. I wish that we do not have to numb out all the time in order to cope with tragedy after tragedy. I want to know how to LIVE fully in a world that feels downright awful some/most times.
This existence of ours is inherently quite depressing. Many scholars have argued that at the bottom of our pain and suffering is the understanding that we are all alone and all going to die. Most of our behaviors then are a way to alleviate the pain and distract ourselves from this truth.
So much so, that our behaviors lead us to mindlessly engage in ways that perpetuate our suffering: consumption, materialism, comparison, achieving, competing, numbing, binging... really all of our "rebel" behaviors. We try to make meaning out of this life by working within our egoic pursuits. I am actually quite certain that below the very common belief that "I am not enough, I am unlovable" is actually, "I'm terrified of dying and my life has been worthless".
We aspire for legacy, purpose, and fulfillment. Ironically, chemically our brains are built for the fact that all pleasure ends. Dopamine kicks in and then it falls. We experience the pleasure and the pleasure goes away. Biologically, this is a reinforcement to get us to continue to pursue the animalistic pleasures of food and reproduction.
But humans are, (sadly?) not just animals. We think so damn much that it separates us from most other living species. It's in our minds that we get stuck. We get stuck in despair, anger, depression, anxiety, and fear. Our traumas of the past and our worries about the future keep us in a state that perpetuates chronic stress, physical consequences, and unhealthy behavioral reactions.
I do not mean to depress you further. What I want to show is your despair is normal. And things are harder. We have higher alcohol consumption than during WW2, higher drug-related deaths, a dramatically warming climate, real and internal threats to our democracy, and rapid gun violence that makes almost no public space feel safe.
Despite the fact that during WW2 in 1940, over 75 million people died in one year, at least we knew the fight we were in and we all were in it (mostly) together.
Now, it feels like no one is doing anything to change this reality. Back during WW2, there was an entire WORLD fighting to end the violence and change things for the better. Now, we are stuck in culture wars, our politicians all worried about campaign donors, and everyone just obsessed with their "brand".
INNOVATION
Just two weeks about I wrote about The Importance of Anger. I was rallying for rage then, after the attacks on women’s rights. A week before that I was rallying for climate action. And one week before that, I asked the question, “what are we doing wrong?” as to why so many of our youth are struggling mentally.
And after this week, I’ve realized all this language is just simply not enough.
You see, I’ve been donating to Sandy Hook Foundation for 8 years. Every month I’ve sent money to the advocates on the hill fighting for gun control. 8 years and nothing has changed. I’ve also donated money to many environmental groups in the last decade and still, we’re facing serious threats to our climate.
Posting on social media is not enough. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. Crying over a glass of wine certainly isn’t going to move the needle. Venting to loved ones and your therapist isn’t going to do anything to change the situation.
We’ve become so accustomed to bad news that we move through it so quickly and miss the opportunity to actually do something. I’m to blame in this too. Just in my review of my year of posts, it’s like processing one tragedy after the other. “Here we go again” I think to myself. We are encouraged to talk it out, share our feelings, donate and call a legislature.
And then we move on. We have bills to pay, mouths to feed, jobs to attend to, soccer games and summer camp registration, and laundry and dinner reservations.
And here’s the thing: that’s okay. We are allowed to keep living in the eye of the hurricane. It’s debilitating to carry the weight of the world’s problems. As an empath, if I thought about all the suffering all day, I’d be in a pool of tears in a fetal position under my covers every day. We have to get back up.
But it doesn’t mean we have to move on.
FEELS
So what do we do? What more can we do?
We wake the F up.
No more thoughts, prayers, “thinking of you”, “sending good vibes”, or posturing on social media. We address the anger and use it.
We vote because our lives depend on it, we call our legislators (not just this week, but every week), and we run for local leadership offices (shout out to our Clinical Director, Lisa, who is on the Northville Board of Education because she did something about her discontent).
We do more than just put our money where our mouth is and let our voices be heard. We engage in discourse with people who have alternate views, have respectful and educational dialogue, and work to bring more compassion to this world by volunteering, speaking up, and being a damn advocate, not just an ally.
We never stop talking about this and never let the lives lost be forgotten because we’re actually staying in these uncomfortable feelings to maintain momentum. We get on the news, talk at businesses, share our ideals/ideas and keep fighting.
We stop numbing out and engaging in behaviors that mindlessly let us stay distracted and disconnected from the realities of life. We show up in our lives and choose to be courageous, vocal, awkward, uncomfortable, sad, and angry. We feel the pain and allow the pain the move us.
We persist. We give time to grieve and then we do not let the grief turn into despair, hopelessness, cynicism, and helplessness. We are stronger than that. We can be patient while we work hard. We believe in the long fight, the just fight, and the collective effort of compassionate people. It took 100 years of fighting for women to earn the right to vote. Nevertheless, she persisted.
We do not avoid the hard stuff but instead do the hard things. What are the hard things? The hard things are staying committed to something that matters, holding someone accountable, discussing “hot topics”, and letting someone see your anger. Hard is also being different, promoting an alternative viewpoint, asking difficult questions, and demanding an answer. Hard is standing up to powerful people, spending your evenings researching and canvassing, and networking with changemakers. Hard is being a change maker yourself.
But lastly, and most importantly, in order to live in a dreadful world… we must live our lives with joy, hope, and gratitude.
We put our precious energy toward the things that serve us and serve others.
We do not waste another moment doing a BS job, unhappy in a relationship, taking someone else’s toxic energy, spending useless time in our heads dwelling on a conversation, planning for a future we do not control, or worried about the cars we drive, the color of our house’s exterior or the clothes we are wearing.
We spend these precious moments in joy and love.
We get off our phones, we connect in real life, we go back to school and try a new hobby and dance and laugh and move our bodies.
We get outdoors, we take a break, we get good sleep, and stay up too late with friends.
We eat that burger, we plant that garden, we take that vacation and we connect with our kids instead of our laptops.
We call that friend, we visit our grandma, we take a mental health day, we laugh and play and ENJOY WHAT WE HAVE.
Because, as my new favorite quote states, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”.
Hugs.
And for me? I’m about to put my political science undergraduate degree hat back on and join this movement. We need compassionate-based leadership and common-sense laws. I know we need managed mental health care. I know we need more accessibility and more family system assistance. I know we need free, preventative mental health screenings and attentive care from in-utero through adulthood. I’m not yet sure how but I’m choosing not to let that stand in my way. I’m not spending another night at my kitchen table crying over these types of tragedies. Enough.
What are you called to do?
Click here to learn more about grief therapy.
