https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57059988
Hey cool kids. Welcome to Mental Health Awareness Week.
No, its' not OK.
When we say its OK to not be OK, its implying there is a normal. That the world we live in with its unique pressures is normal. This? This isn't normal.
Humans weren't designed for this.
So no, its not OK.
There are things humans were designed for. We are a social species. We need other people, but we also need our own space. We need to be individuals to attract a mates and/or mates - to show off our sparking plumage and vast array of dad jokes and cod philosophy - but we also need to know when to blend into a mass.
To subsume who we are.
It's a unique skillset. More Liam Gallagher than Liam Neeson. We want to be in the band. But maybe we also want to go solo. Sometimes simultaneously.
We are more than the sum of our own parts. Together we have built amazing things and fucked over each other in equal measure.
But this world we live in is not OK.
How can so many suffer while so few have so much? Why does God let people die, choking on their own sputum? Who let the dogs out?
Do not adjust your set. This is not normal.
We were built to hang out in friendship groups, not live alone in boxes. We were built to forage the shelves of a game store, not to click on a link so a human robot can pick and pluck it and dispatch it by drone. From thought to reality, with only the faint whiff of urine because there are no toilet breaks in Jeff Bezos Heaven.
This was not the way it was supposed to be.
You are not a broken work unit in need of loving yourself with a side order of paroxetine. Maybe you are not even broken at all.
Maybe we weren't meant to have every TV show and film at our fingertips. Maybe we weren't supposed to be connected to every human being that has ever lived 24/7. Maybe intersectionality was supposed to be a tool to help us understand difference rather than a weaponised social media algorithm for grinding us down into ever increasing isolation.
Maybe we are just lonely.
Maybe we all just want to reach out and say how much we love all those crazy mixed up people in our lives. How the world is better because it has us in it, regardless of how often we fuck up.
As I get older and older the world races faster and faster towards zero point. Maybe anxiety and depression is a defence mechanism, because we can't look at the world and say 'this is so fucking not OK' because we have limited power to change it.
For limited read none.
All we have the power to change is other people's dispositions. To reach out and help people up. To smile at them, give them a compliment - and not in a creepy way. To be human,. To connect. To do one tiny thing for one other person trapped here in a world that is not OK. Just to make it better, for one infinitesimal second.
To make it bearable.
Because the pressure is real.
But here's the thing. We know that human interaction - positive interaction, positivity - boosts our oxytocin. Makes us feel connected. Makes us feel that maybe life isn't so bad. That we can do. that we have agency.
Maybe that's why our technocratic overlords don't want us to. Here I am tap tap tapping away. So are you.
How are you? I miss you you know. I want to give you a big hug and tell you everything is going to be OK, even if its not. Maybe especially if its not. If we all did two nice things in a day for other human beings, maybe this world would not be not OK. Maybe it would be a fucking paradise.
Maybe not tomorrow. I mean, tall order right? No pressure.
I'm not OK. Not always. And its not OK, but you make it better. You always have. You always will. And I should tell you that more often.
Lets tell everyone.