Member-only story
I Met an Anti-Capitalist Today (and I Liked It)
Exploring “ists” and “isms”
Every morning I wake up with anxiety. From a lifetime of experience dealing with anxiety and depression, I know the answer does not lie in ruminating on my thoughts. I dig into my bag of mindfulness tricks and get on with my day. Stay in the present moment; just keep putting one foot in front of the other; stay in the body and not in the mind.
Even though I am coping, life feels rather hopeless lately. Society is in such chaos: climate change is ruining our ecosystems, racist children with guns are committing mass murder, more and more lunatics are running for political office, groceries are becoming unaffordable, hospitals are understaffed and overcrowded, homelessness grows.
Yet it seems the majority of folks are happy to brush all these ills aside, as long things aren’t too bad yet in their own lives. I keep hearing the phrases, “I don’t think about it; it’s not on my radar, why raise my blood pressure?”
The people saying these things actually believe that their protective bubble is never going to burst. They don’t have empathy for those already suffering (often assuming that the poor caused their own problems). These privileged people in their bubbles don’t want to risk raising their blood pressure by even thinking about such depressing…