Be the change you want to see
It's March 4th, which my high school teacher observed is the only day of the year that is a directive. We're two months into the new year, and whether or not each of us has stuck with our intentions for 2026 so far—whether the feedback from the universe with respect to our life has been fair or not—we must march forth.
This isn't easy and I know on most days it feels hopeless. This past few days has not been kind to my mental health. (Hint: the Wikipedia article for World War III updated its section on potential flashpoints).
Still, I have it in me to shake things up. The Stoics taught that it's important to distinguish between what is within our control and what is not. I ask myself, what can I do? Besides doomscrolling and wallowing in pessimism and nihilism? Such questions call to my mind that quote, "be the change you want to see in the world." Which is a more poetic way of saying no one is coming to save me, so it's time to roll up my sleeves and do something meaningfully. Otherwise I'm reinforcing learned helplessness.
Growing up with stories of superheroes and anime protagonists and knights of chivalry honed in me a desire to save the world. There is still a part of me that believes I can do some good. Perhaps it's naive of me, and I'm no stranger to feeling frustrated and alone and discouraged, but I'm simply that kind of stubborn. What I've learned is to be realistic with what I can do, influence, affect, effect.
Well, it's been three months since I started this blog and it's actually the longest time I've gone in sustaining one. However, by now I've probably said all that I want to say in terms of expressing myself. I'm a proponent of simple living—I don't know how many different times I can write about that topic.
And then when I peak at what's trending on this site, I see that it's not just me. There's a non-zero number of writers who write about the same thing over and over, as if Shakespeare's Dogberry were given a digital platform. At some point, it becomes more noise than signal, because nothing substantive is being offered. Using myself as a case study, I posit that writing about the same topic from a different angle is an instance of "this time it'll be different and the change I really want to enact in my life will start as soon as I publish this iteration of my foregone conclusion." It feels good in the moment and takes little effort (indeed, the effort required diminishes over time as a byproduct of practice), but if more people did this, then it crowds out trending and perusing blogs becomes dull.
This isn't me calling anyone boring. I remember a post a while ago in which the author called the other users boring, as if the author was entitled to entertainment. That left a bad taste in my mouth. Nor am I calling anyone to be more interesting. I seem to recall some discourse around performativity on this platform; the idea that we encourage others to keep being creative and sharing the good stuff (which is a variant of the first issue, in that some users are asking others to keep the stream of content flowing so that they have a sustainable source of content to devour, presumably to distract from other things going on in their life.)
This is really me describing the change I want to see, in order that I may become that change. I want to see more intertextuality, which is the nerdy way of saying text that relates to other texts, dissolving the isolation between posts. To repeat: I think I've said all I mean to say in my first three months of posting, but the practice of writing has been good for my soul. Every minute I spend thinking about how to string my thoughts together is one less minute doomscrolling. The solution I'm eager to implement, then, is writing in response to what others share. Blogging can often feel like yelling into the ether; this I know. I also know there's a joy in getting a response from a reader. All my thoughts in this post point to this idea of stepping outside my own thoughts to be more in communication and community with the people on this platform.
Let's give this intention a shot.