“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I’ve been insecure and anxious for the past ten years. Maybe it’s my whole life. Frankly, I’m not good at managing my mental and emotional ups and downs. Just like anybody else in this modern world, I’ve been through a lot.
In our modern world, unless you’re living in a remote dense rainforest far away from human civilizations, we barely face physically dangerous situations. We, however, could experience other forms of injuries, such as emotional pain, rejection, and distress.
Some researchers found evidence that those emotional pains could be as harmful and dangerous as physical pains. As you may already be aware of, not only could we experience physical violence, we could experience various forms of violence in this complicated world – the violence of attitude, the violence of words and the list goes on.
For instance, the total number of gun violence in the US in 2020 was 18,526. Of which, homicide, which includes murder, and unintentional accident, was 8,296, and suicide was 10,230. On the other hand, when we turn our focus on Japan, where gun violence is significantly lower than that of the US due to the heavy gun restrictions, however, the total number of those who took their own lives during 2020 was 21,081.
Even though guns, an extreme form of physical violence, are heavily restricted in Japan, the number of suicide in the country surpassed the total number of gun violence victims in the US. The causes behind their tragic actions vary from bullying, social pressure, job loss, financial-related issues, and their relationship with their family. And what I see here is that those numbers could support the aforementioned argument that emotional pain could be as harmful and dangerous as physical pain.
Considering the current situation where we are not allowed to travel freely as we did before, we’re more likely to be emotionally unstable. Since we’re social animals, the impact of the limitation in social interaction caused by the global pandemic is immense in our society.
Also, the current circumstances where we’re connected constantly online makes us all susceptible to online behaviors. Think about it. When I was a kid during the 90s, I would leave school or the shopping mall and essentially leave my peers behind for the day. My home was a break from my social pressure. But, thanks to social media, we’re all susceptible to social pressure all the time.
And I could experience a similar sort of pressure during my work. Even though I’m allowed to work from home since the last year, I constantly feel heavy pressure from my teammates. The moment when I turn off my computer and close the laptop is the most pleasant of the day.
Essentially, all we can do now is admitting that we can’t control everything. For instance, in my work conditions, I can’t control my assignments and every other element of my work. But at least I can control my response to the situations. And this idea could be relevant to our modern life in general. Maybe we need to relax and have faith that things will work out in a certain way.
Just relax. What we can do for now is to control the elements of life and see how it turns out. If you’re also struggling, personally or professionally, and feeling drained, hope this helps you. I’m also in the middle of a turbulent life, let’s fight for our happiness together.
Let us begin…
Here are some shots I photographed in December 2011.
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