Little Universe

It sometimes feels like we live in a world that makes us sad, but we’re not allowed to actually say we are.

It’s like something I read yesterday when I was doomscrolling on Instagram. That in patriarchal societies, one common way to keep women lower in the hierarchy is to claim that they are each other’s worst enemy, and pit them against each other. This gives them someone to blame for their troubles, and something to focus on – a sense of direction, however misguided.

In a similar way, the sad world pits us against our own selves, by encouraging us to resist and feel shame about our natural expressions of our full range of emotions. In this way, we are distracted from the real cause of our sadness.

So we try to fix ourselves. And sometimes it works. We develop healthy morning routines, diet, exercise, community, fulfilling work. We create youtube and instagram and tiktok accounts to share our hard-earned learnings.

But what if we can’t fix ourselves?

What if our SAD (seasonal affective disorder) lamp, meditation app, mindfulness walks and therapy are just keeping us afloat, not flourishing? What if we try so hard to develop consistent healthy wake-up times, eating habits, exercise, and so on – but it doesn’t work, and it just reinforces what a failure we feel like? What if we’re not laughing much, but at least we’re not crying as much either?

Well, that’s easy. We don’t need to go away and fix something else. We can just have a psychiatrist proclaim us depressed, and take some pills.

Sarcasm aside, I’m not saying the answer is to blame someone else. From our upbringing to ‘the system’, we have numerous valid reasons for our malaise that we can’t change.

So why am I saying the world makes us sad? Doesn’t that mean I’m inviting us to blame the world?

I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Some things are just going to make us sad, and it’s not the world’s fault, it’s just cause and effect. If the sun goes down earlier in winter, we can’t really change that, but we can try getting a SAD lamp and see if it helps. If I’m catching the same cold as everyone else, the one that takes two weeks to pass and leaves a lingering cough, it’s so annoying but I’d feel a little better expressing my dissatisfaction. If I can’t find me a man because I have baggage and keep self-sabotaging, and each time I heal one emotional wound another one flares up, I’m going to feel helpless and need to tell someone that it sucks, rather than keeping it bottled up. If I struggle with time management, and maintain healthy sleep/diet/exercise for just 3 days before it all falls apart again, I’m going to feel like a hopeless fuckup who can’t help herself.

But maybe I need to be around people who won’t see me as a downer because I’m sad for valid reasons. Who understand the frustration of trying to improve and failing repeatedly. I could be that person for someone else, as well.

I don’t really know the world’s role in all this. I don’t know who to blame. I don’t know if blame is necessary or relevant.

Because actually, one of the most frustrating things in life that everyone has to face is the fact that we try, fail, try differently, fail, try another way, fail, and don’t know if we’ll ever succeed. Because the trying looks different every time, but the failure is the same. Crushing. Out of my control. Again.

If we can all have just one person who will hear us complain about it yet again, and not make us feel like a fuckup who needs therapy, and give us a pat on the back for being persistent and creative, maybe we’ll live in a world which does have sadness embedded in it, but it will also be very okay.