28 June

I see the toxic positivity online, can feel the desperation behind it, people trying to pretend everything is fine and normal when in fact the whole place is falling apart. As if posting happy things will make the bad things go away, and we can all live in this positivity cocoon, away from life’s troubles. It reminds me of research on stress. People do everything they can to try to ‘relieve’ stress, to ‘relax’. But that will always inevitably fail, if you don’t fix the situation that’s causing the stress. And the same research actually says something more, that the easiest way to fix the problem is to stop seeing it as a problem. Life has challenges, always, what we as rich nations have forgotten. ‘Rising to a challenge’ used to be the most ‘positive’ and exciting thing humans did. Now it sends us into a foetal position with anxiety. I post about Covid for example not to be ‘negative’, but to positively embrace the actual challenge we all have to face right now. I love the challenge of it, even as I hate the disease.