The Human Condition is not a Pathology
As with everything pertaining to humanness, our mental health is fallible; like our bodies, our minds malfunction. They also age, they break down, and eventually they shut down. The more we share with others how we manage our mental health, the better for everyone as many of us still reflexively fear what we do not yet fully understand.

Narrating our lives point by point without attempting to interpret what has happened to us is counterproductive. The familiar aspect of the topic might strike a chord among fellow humans and make us feel less alone for a hot minute but it won’t have been thought-provoking to write or read. Instead, it keeps us exactly where we’re at, glued to the spot by a diagnosis we have no idea how to live with so we hail it as our guru, our guide, and our shield.

Different diagnoses command a different kind of attention, elicit a different kind of voyeurism. Although we all have a dark side, most of us have found it will smother us unless we keep it in check. If only we believed in ourselves half as much as we believe in our limitations, if we expended as much energy showing we can instead of defending why we can’t…

When we cannot think, going into observation mode might lessen our anxiety and provide material for future writing. But typing those up without context or attempt to connect the dots isn’t writing, it’s data entry. Writing is data processing, it calls for intellectual and emotional labor and rigor; writing demands of us the ability to step back and gain critical distance. Wonky or not, human brains are not machines and they need time to process life; cutting out thinking is against nature. Nevertheless we do try and we end up missing nuances as our command of language becomes more or more tentative, our words vaguer and vaguer.

One day, humanness is a synonym of sickness and we begin to self-destruct in a flurry of frustration. Wasn’t the internet supposed to save us from ourselves by connecting us across all that divides us? If the words we choose to publish do not enrich our experience of being a human in the world or encourage the growth of empathy, compassion, and dignity for all, how will we ever reclaim our humanity once we’ve sold it off to the highest bidder?

And how will we ever hold on to language once words have lost most of their meaning? Language is a living organism; when one definition takes over all others, the word shrinks and so does our vision of the world until it’s so tiny it fits just the one person.
['A Singular Story']
['Future', 'Ideas', 'Mental Health', 'Language', 'Philosophy']