witnesstothese

When so many things in life aren't going our way, the idea of "fixing" them feels like the most logical, and natural, next step. The greater the miseries and the longer they have been around, the more urgent this need to fix can feel.  If you're anything like me, you go about this one of two ways: Give in, and start to make sense of the chaos in your mind. One screw up after another, one regret after another, one worry after another - you start to bully them into order with all the strength and problem-solving skills you can muster, making a laundry list of all the things that need attention ASAP. How else can you tackle them if you don't have a plan in place? "You should have done all this a long time ago", whispers your inner critic. Give up, and start to wonder what's the point of trying, even. The horrors will continue to barge into your life (without even knocking, how impolite & intrusive!) and you will learn to "live with them". ...

At a time when communication is instant and constant, you'd think it's also honest. Sharing a meme, posting a photograph, responding to a friend's message - all of it is communication in one form or another. Why, then, is it more difficult now than ever to hold honest conversations with our loved ones - about how we are doing, about how they are doing, about anything at all? Our response to "Hey, how are you doing?" is invariably some version of "I am good, how about you?". These AI-like responses feel like knee-jerk reactions, ready to be dished out as soon as we see the question. There's a rehearsed quality to it all, like we've lived out this scenario a thousand times, like putting on a well-worn mask for a performance. This least problematic and the most palatable response also seems like the most acceptable one, so we retrieve it from our muscle memory, tracing on our mobile keypads one letter after another in a now-familiar sequence - ...