"The thing that scared her most was not hiding in a cupboard, or under the bed, or floating in the corners of the room like a ghost. The thing that scared her most was inside her head, pressing its thumbs against the backs of her eyeballs and whispering from the insides of her ears:
"You have been chosen, not for one unhappiness, but hundreds, and I will make you yell at your mother, and hit your friends, and bite and scrape and burn your own skin, I will make the days long and the nights even worse, and you will hide in your bed, under the blankets, and in the dark, away from the lights and the crowds and the noise, until the day you decide that things would be easier if you never woke up at all."
- The Almighty Sometimes, by Kendall Feaver
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I remember a not-so-tactful exchange with a colleague before, something along the lines of the necessity to complete a course. They claim that to have the mental resilience to see through the programme, we cannot consider quitting. In a distasteful comparison, they describe it as akin to suicide, that we do not even see it as an option on the table. I recall genuinely feeling very perplexed, flustered, and did not find that analogy to be particularly effective, and that was perhaps the first time that it was a striking realisation for me, that I've been having a problematic passive ideation. Six months into the programme, I skipped showering every day, stopped brushing teeth, was getting maybe three hours of sleep every night, twice crying on the stand, and started getting a regular tingling numbness in my hands and feet. I was privileged to have some very supportive colleagues and friends, who would speak with me and listen to me and hug me when I cry. 89% into the course, I quit. It took the following five months before starting to feel like I was finally healing again. I may not have become stronger, but I'd like to think that today, I've at least gotten better than I left.
How does one live a life of no regrets?
Perhaps it is to always strive to make the best decisions that we can in the prevailing circumstances, with the available information that we have and the value systems that we hold at that point in time; We often retrospectively regret certain decisions if we had known the best decision to be made in the moment, but made a conscious choice to do otherwise. It may also be possible that our core principles have changed since then to make us realise the error of our past ways, thereby eliciting thoughts of "what could have been".
Sometimes, however, what could or could not be is not within our control.
They say to live each day as if your last. I largely disagree with this statement.
This platitude exhorts not to delay taking action out of the fear of an uncertain outcome, for the regret of today's inaction will likely weigh heavier tomorrow where you cannot reap what you do not sow. This interpretation is fair and serves as good advice.
But to literally live each day as if your last would be highly shortsighted and unwise behaviour, for it justifies the pursuit of instant gratification at the expense of mid-term or long-term planning, which will likely be detrimental to your future. Thus, we must still take actions to secure or reduce the uncertainty of our future prospects, to increase the probability of living as or more comfortably in our tomorrows than today.
I will, however, posit the following: It is not that we should live each day as if our last, but that perhaps we must not live each day with the expectation of the guarantee of days to follow.
The future is not guaranteed. Whatever we hold as true or given today can be wrested from us faster than we may be able to comprehend our loss. As such, we must not make a habit of taking the things we have for granted, and instead actively appreciate that which we have been fortunate enough to receive.
They say that "yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift - that's why we call it the present". Sometimes, it is important to live in the moment, instead of constantly worrying about the future at the expense of the guarantee of the present. Though the consequences of the future may be real and awaiting realisation, in the present moment they exist only in our imagination.
Have you ever turned down an invitation to meet up with friends, go for an event, or help someone with something (that will take a non-negligible amount of time), just because you "could be doing something else more productive" in that time, but ended up wasting the time away anyway?
I observe a common trend where we tend to calculate the opportunity cost of spending that time with or for other people, with respect to its "maximum possible potential" instead of its "realistic mean value".
Perhaps due to our natural propensity for loss aversion, we tend to overestimate our productivity in the time that is "taken away" or "borrowed away" from us (hence projecting the "maximum possible potential" that we can achieve in that amount of time). However, this is often not a practical representation of its value, as it fails to recognise the realistic regression toward the mean - that we might not be as productive in that time as we think we will anyway.
This causes us to have an unfair perception of the realistic value of that block of time, which hampers our rational decision-making on how best to spend that time (ie if we should spend that time with friends/helping the other person, or doing our work and own tasks, etc), often leading us to turn down and later regret not spending that time with our friends, or whatever was the presented alternative.
On a macro level, the central concept of efficiency is to achieve a same outcome through less effortful means; the whole industry of convenience revolves around the human tendency of laziness. Similarly, on a personal level, it is easier to and we consequently often seek that which is expedient, instead of meaningful.
I greatly fear living a wasted life, or one of no value.
Do we have an intrinsic value?
I have pondered this extensively and remain unsure about that. I believe that we only have or are as much value as other people value or assign value to us; our value is measured by the cumulative impact that our lives have on other people's lives.
In market-based economics, it is commonly remarked that "price is what you pay, value is what you get". Similarly, our direct interactions with people "cost" them in terms of their time and attention, opportunity cost, or of emotional capacity, and I believe that we are only of value if these people with whom we interact come to benefit from the exchange, in a way that they would not otherwise have. Indirectly, we can also create value through the work that we do, if our labour or the fruits of it come to positively impact other people.
Correspondingly, we create negative value if we or our work harms or disadvantages others. It thus follows that our value can be interpreted as the cumulative net impact that our actions and our lives have on others. So the best kind situation is to be in the company of people who value you for who you are, which means that with negligible to zero effort on your part, your existence already serves to provide value in its own right, to them.
How might we then reconcile this perspective with the prevailing understandings of self-esteem and self-respect, since these tenets seem to imply an intrinsic value?
I opine that the aforementioned may not concern so much with the absolute value of the self, but instead can describe one's ability and capacity to see one's own ability and potential to create value. This may underscore the importance of expressing appreciation toward other people, for this allows them to realise, validate and internalise the value that they have created for you, which benefits their views of their own worth; gratitude and appreciation serves as a form of external validation, which I would hesitate to claim is unhealthy to require in moderation.
The problem only arises when we can only depend on this external validation with no mechanism of internal validation. Internal validation refers to allowing oneself to recognise one's feelings and negative thoughts for what they are without denying them, before focusing on improving the situation or seeking a positive perspective. In other words, where external validation is other's expression of gratitude toward oneself, a healthy internal validation would be the capacity and ability to affirm the reality of one's situation and thereafter remain grateful and appreciative.
Internal validation is the confidence to know that "I Am Okay", instead of the dependence on letting others determine "Am I Okay?".
Am I okay?
I'm tired of feeling everything so intensely and being so easily affected by a little bit of everything all of the time. Perhaps there is merit in the unfeeling— that giving up the excitement of living is the cost of staying alive and coping.
Is the solution just not to feel? Even if so, is it even possible?
A refutation of B F Skinner's theories of Behaviorism, is that his fundamental argument is "we do things that we like because we like them", which is not a functionally useful explanation. Perhaps not, but it will be useful in introducing the following critical conundrum.
Have you ever felt like crap from falling sick? Then you may know that your experience of anything, is merely whatever you are feeling through it.
If feeling "good" "high" or "happy" is an end in itself, then does it follow that we should seek and consume "happy vices"? It will explain why some people do, but not why others don't. Notwithstanding culture or availability, I posit that 1) individuals will weigh the "high potential" against 2) the probability of 3) any resulting consequences, eg to health, with law, or other by 4) considering past or observations of other people's experiences.
Does misery give happiness meaning? It can serve as an anchoring point to be grateful for good things happening. However, I do not see the utility of continual or intermittent misery, for a limited past experience may suffice. Misery doesn't give happiness meaning, but rather, happiness is meaning itself. It would be immoral to intentionally torture people, to make them better appreciate the pleasures of life.
Feelings underpin our foundational desire for pleasurable experiences and fulfilling relationships. This is not claiming that everything that feels good is good for you, but that everything that you desire to do has an end in "feeling good" in itself— or that the alternative action would seem to make you "feel worse", or uncomfortable. Therefore, you cannot claim with full intellectual honesty that at the end of the day, feelings are just feelings and have no weight.
Since feelings are thus experientially significant, it may be possible that negative feelings severely deteriorates it. How might we intellectually honestly reconcile the prevailing inconsistent approach of only "feeling" some (goods) fully but not others (bads)?
Stoicism gives up the high of life for tranquility of the mind. However, I think that this may be a very extreme way of life, that has the potential to be cold, unhuman, and really takes away from the equally conflicting described pursuit of eudaimonia.
I think that we should be wary of such extreme ideologies, because leaning too heavily into one is not to solve the problem with our perceptions, but to push back the problem to another such time where these perceptions start to become inconsistent or fall apart again. Thus, a sustainable paradigm shift cannot just be something that is different, but must be better, falsifiable, and comprise enough nuance in the recognition of its limitations, and our acceptance of those natural consequences that follow from it.
In our ceaseless pursuit for progress, it may be possible that we lose sight of the process and the value of the work that we are doing; we might be too focused on a single end goal to forget that we have come further than we were before, and that we would not have been able to reach this stage alone. Thus, perhaps it would be a good idea to pause and celebrate the process, and be grateful for the circumstances and people who have supported us along the way. This is not to say stop reaching for ambitious goals and ideals, but to be mindful not to trivialise your current progress.
One of the ways to remain connected to people in our lives is through social media. For a period of time of recent past, I had had the privilege of spending more time on social media than the typical, and began to wonder about the mechanisms of developing and sustaining friendships.
There are various ways that we come to make and keep friends. I believe that the most common and only sustainable way to develop new friendships is through the pursuit of a common activity. This is why we make most of our friends through school, the workplace or volunteering and interest groups.
Of interest in my recent observations of some friends and acquaintances, is that the friendships that they have made through their respective places of worship seem to be the strongest and most "everlasting". I surmise that this is due to the practice of Faith being one of the very few truly unshakeable lifelong pursuits, thus by the transitive property, the related friendships become grounded in strength that is reinforced every time they meet to engage in relevant activities of worship or just hang out. I seek not today further develop the discussion on the institution of religion, but raise this point to demonstrate that the maintenance of friendships require and necessitate a basis of commonality.
This is why the deepest friendships are formed when individuals are able to "vibe" with each other, for this means that they share similar fundamental principles, values, priorities, life outlook and personalities, which are unlikely to change - and even if they do as our understanding of the world changes and we mature in thinking, are unlikely to completely become the antithesis. This is also the reason that such friendships require very little to no maintenance, and the parties can converse at a deeply vulnerable level even after not communicating for a very long time (unless their aforementioned fundamentals have changed).
Social media is thus in my opinion a very powerful and useful tool in the maintenance of friendships and acquaintanceships, for Posts, Updates, Stories, Clips or other forms of "daily life" content provide reasons for engagement; when you put out a Post or a Story, you are essentially creating Content to which your Viewers can respond. Comments and Replies facilitate "out of the blue" short conversations between you and people whom you would prefer to keep in your life, but may not want to or get the opportunity to talk to every day.
It was only very recently, that I've found some things that I think I really want to do, but before when I had used to have more time free from external commitments and deadlines, I had seemed to spend most of those such days just waiting for the day to end; and where there are deadlines to meet, I struggle to ignite the drive and impetus to work toward the timely completion of those assignments. It is not that the work I do has no meaning, but that I oftentimes cannot truly feel the fulfillment of purpose so commonly expressed by those with whom I work. Some days I feel defeated even before making it out of bed.
The meaning of life is to give life meaning, and I believe that the only way to find meaning is to create it, through seeking a domain in which we are able to and capable of creating value. This can also help us remain inspired and excited for the future. I am convinced that I may have been operating outside of my circle of competence for too long, and worry about the implications that my incapability or incompetence might have on my colleagues. I wish that they may know that I am doing my best, and I hope not to burden them with my inadequacies.
I am deeply envious of extroverted people. How does it feel to wake up every day eager to take on the world, and fueled by the very social interactions that form the basis of our society, without the debilitating and tiring anxiety and associated thoughts? How can they breathe as if it's easy, if I disappeared would I be missed? The mechanism of making new friends with introverts is a lose-lose-lose scenario, because of the nature of the situation of social interaction that is necessary to make friends in the first place. The third loss is in despite this, I feel lonely anyway, even though I dislike making small talk with the people who are "easy" to make friends with.
In my experience, big problems don't make small problems easier to manage. On the contrary, small problems rob my attention and energy from really focusing on the big problems, which sometimes leads to incipient spiral.
I worry about the future a bit too often, and one of the things I most fear is to be alone. I have not found it easy to truly enjoy single life, contrary to the popular understanding of the "freedom" that not being tethered to a partner affords. Whilst there may be truth in the claim that no amount of external support and validation can save one who has given up on oneself, I would hesitate to dismiss the notion that being in a healthy romantic relationship can make you feel loved and valued, which I think is a fundamental human need.
I think what hits me the hardest is the difficulty of picturing or planning a future without having met the person with whom you want to build your future with. Whilst not everyone may be interested in spending the rest of their lives with just another person, I am one who may enjoy that reciprocity of confidence, vulnerability of intimacy and exclusivity of attention that may come with the honest and measured maintenance of a monogamous romantic relationship. How ironic, that in our years of schooling we are expected not to date, but to somehow have been in a stable relationship by the time we're working young adults.
I would rather be in love than be single. I personally feel that being in a relationship, I should still be able to do the same things as when I'm single, and these things include becoming a better person, working on myself, or working on my career in the future; I feel like I should still be able to do these things in a relationship. And when I'm in one, I already make time for myself to do some of these things that I enjoy, I can still take time to have some alone time, which is why when I'm single, I guess it just kinda feels really lonely sometimes?
I am afraid of forgetting and of being forgotten. The past is a memory, and our memory is imperfect. This may be a problem if we become tunnel-visional toward people and their behaviour; we frame the reality of the past by selectively remembering, and for the most of us, this arises not out of choice but by in innate inability to remember all of everything. Perhaps through the use of memory aids such as photos or diary entries, we may access memories to relive the emotional experience of moments past, in the absence of opportunities to create and experience new such moments in the present.
There is so much to be thankful for; but I think it may be normal to launch into such spiral instability when left to one's own thoughts.
The most insidious aspect of the mental health discussion is that mental health issues exist on a spectrum, ranging from the medically diagnosable to the momentary. Because of this, it is very difficult to ascertain where exactly on this spectrum an individual might lie. It is often said that every case matters and that we should not downplay our concerns and worries when it comes to the maintenance of good mental health, however it would be indefensible to claim that every case matters equally and is equally important when compared objectively from an external perspective.
This especially becomes a problem when we are considering any case but the extremes. The extremes are relatively easy to differentiate - for example, if someone is intending suicide, this would be of grave concern, but if someone has just failed an ungraded assignment and feels sad for a bit, that would not objectively be as serious, even if it is stressing out the individual in question nonetheless. Thus, this leads to the realisation of an indeterminate middle class of cases comprising mental-emotional issues that are not grievous enough to warrant urgent attention or dedication of resources, but are greatly bothering the individual on a personal level regardless, especially as we each might not have fully understood and mastered our personal coping mechanisms to overcome such setbacks.
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"I've never felt so much control over my life. I feel calm as I come to terms with my death."
She was 21 years old.
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We must be careful not to overmedicalise mental health. There's medication that can improve the quality of life by regulating chemical imbalances in the brain, if it is clinically assessed to be the most plausible cause of daily mental debilitation. Perhaps privilege is just a matter of perspective, but I cannot with full intellectual honesty claim that my daily functioning has been operationally impaired to the point of clinical concern, albeit I struggle very much in upholding the facade of normalcy everyday. I do not know, after all, how much pretending is the normal amount of pretending.
It is difficult to identify that which is normal. Some thoughts feel abnormal, but is normal for everyone to have, like the voice that tells you to stab yourself when washing a kitchen knife. To wrongly classify the abnormality of thought due to the constraint of not being able to view the normal spectrum of thought can be inconvenient if we inadvertently cause alarm. Imagine if you had a slight cough and someone started doing CPR on you. Which other thoughts are similarly normal, and which are causes for concern?
We do not actively identify that which is normal. There is only a need to classify that which isn't, so that we may have the means to refer to it. This is the intrinsic power of labels. I first "confirmed" that there may be some "problem" with my thinking, when I realised that thinking of suicide even passively may not normal. Consider the following scale of suicidal ideation:
1. No suicidal thoughts
2. Intrusive thoughts (low-risk and normal)
3. Passive suicidal ideation (thoughts of death, no intent to self harm)
4. Active suicidal ideation (thoughts of death, considering self harm)
5. Suicidal intent (high risk, developing suicide plan)
6. Suicide attempt
I didn't know it was possible to not have any suicidal thoughts at all, or that suicidal intent and attempt is the only criteria for developing concern.
I shouldn't have to die, you know, before pain becomes valid. You shouldn't set someone that challenge.
I didn't really want to die, I just wanted to leave. The idea of getting a respite from facing the mental anguish every day feels very comforting indeed. Where no one else gets to take control of my life, if I don't get to.
How does one go from leaving to living (again?)?
A large part of my "mental health strategy", is to write everything down. I write everything down not because I enjoy writing, but because the thoughts weigh too heavy in my head if I do not offload them, and if I do not offload them to an external medium, they occupy my subconscious and fester in the background of my daily mental processes, further robbing me of my already limited capacity for attentiveness.
It seems to be that most persons who pen their thoughts of this nature are those who are gifted in prose or poetry, and can write very well to represent these emotions and ruminations with eloquence and elegance. I suspect that many of us in this situation choose to go "professional", in openly sharing our stories, not only because we hope that our stories can help someone else (which I hope it does, and will be very heartening to know of), but at its core, to be heard and taken seriously.
Are we only capable of thoughts that we have language for? Is it possible to conceptualise that which we cannot describe? If you cannot describe a feeling, are you incapable of feeling it, or do you just feel it fully and are unable to encapsulate it in words?
Consider these questions, because I'm not sure if it is the case that my proclivity for writing prose is the tool that helps me express myself better and relieve my mind, or the very bane that causes me to think so much in the first place. However, this may also just be a classic case of survivorship bias or the availability heuristic, because people who don't write well may be less inclined to share their writing in the first place, which makes all the written word that I encounter already skewed in sample.
Speaking is the salvation. I often fear of falling into the fallacy of the self-fulfilling prophecy, where my fears and worries may come true because they are reinforced through my active rationalisation of them. I am trying to be mindful to express my irrational concerns in moderation to other people, commensurate to how much people respond to and reciprocate to the depth of my vulnerability.
I've been intentionally trying to make a habit out of active gratitude.
I am grateful for the strength of personal friendships, luck of favourable circumstance, tact of strangers, and serendipity of weak ties.
I used to consider that maybe I could gaslight myself into feeling better— until I learnt that that's essentially Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. But I've had just a taste of the impact that a supportive community of like-minded individuals can have, and really in those brief encounters of events, I have found more respite and sense of entitlement to be myself than all the writing that I may do on my own.
I reflect on the understated importance of community, opportunity, and proactiveness. “If you think about which people suffer the most mental health issues, sorry it’s not the youth— it’s the elderly, and we know that the effect of loneliness is to smoking 15 cigarettes a day". But the effect of loneliness and a lack of purpose can afflict anyone— though I concur that the youth are better positioned to do something about it, as I've had the privilege to.
I think that both must be balanced: between first a sense of self-confidence that you can contribute value, with the right environment, context, and people that can recognise and celebrate that of you— and unfortunately or not, this seems like an auto-catalysing feedback loop that can lead one to either flirt with dysthymia as I have, or spiral higher.
The concept of the adjacent possible has changed my personal outlook. I may often still feel inferior to people "better" than me, but I now understand that we're on different timelines, and to enable that advanced possibility in mine, I must first take the actions within my circle of influence that facilitate it. Gratitude is thus recognising that a worse alternative possibility could have been realised, and being grateful that it didn't; Also conversely, being grateful for the serendipity that any desirable event of small probability had even occurred.
Maybe identity isn't about diversifying the risk of crisis, but about starting to write the script of your life on your terms.
Or at least, to try to.
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I'm eight years old, we have guests and my hand is in the ice bucket. But it's not working. I can feel myself disappearing. I'm half here, half not, and it's ridiculous - I know it's ridiculous - how could someone be here, and yet not be here? - but I don't know how to explain it to you: that I need to put my hand in the ice because the sensation reminds me I'm still connected to the earth- and I don't want to embarrass you in front of your guests - so when you ask what I'm doing, I just cry and say what I hope is more acceptable: 'I don't know where I am."
And you come up to me, you take my hand out of the bucket, you warm it up between your own hands, and you say: 'Anna, you're with me.' And the logic of that was just so ... faultless... how could I argue with it?
Of course. Yes. That's exactly where I am. I'm with you.
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