So we just ignore it?

I probably don't need to remind you all the things wrong with the world past, present, and future. For the last handful of years in particular there has been a weight seemingly on all of us. When you think things get better something else inevitably pops up to remind you that something is wrong.

9/11, Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis were all moments of my youth that I remember as "a big deal." While I wasn't personally impacted, emotionally these moments left a psychological scab that every so often I need to pick at. The difference with that period and now was that they were disjointed. After they happened you had time to breathe.

As someone firmly in adulthood living in the 20's that feeling never comes. It is this feeling of drowning under the weight of the world. Worse still you have to carry on professionally and socially as if it isn't happening at all.

It is like a terrible car crash that happened in your front yard that you have to somehow ignore. How can I hang out with friends inside when I hear people screaming outside? Why must I go to work when there is a human tragedy unfolding feet away? How can I simply leave my house knowing there is a crash in my yard? What happens when this crash gets cleaned up and another happens a couple weeks later? What if next time the crash doesn't happen in my yard but in my home?

It is suffocating. Instead of an angel and a devil on my shoulders providing guidance there is a fly buzzing around my ears constantly, whispering news of disaster.

But where is the line? A frequent conversation in my home is "well, we shouldn't just bury our heads in the sand! We have to do something!" The sentiment is natural. The problems at hand aren't something I can change. All I can do is my little bit and hope that that feeds into a larger effort so that change happens. All I can do is make sure that I'm positioned well in case something even more terrible occurs.

Is that how I have been conditioned? How we have been conditioned? It feels impossibly difficult to exit my perspective and look at what is possible. A drop of water can't change the tides of the ocean, right?

Infuriating. Demoralizing. Destabilizing.

Yet I still seek alternatives.