Elmo’s wellness check uncovers existential dread and despair on social media, nobody's ok right now - eviltoast
  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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    10 months ago

    All I can say is you’re not alone and I really wish I could give you a hug right now, friend. :(

    I got this favorite literary passage for you though. I think we all ought to hear it a bit more often:

    Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam…

    Sam: I know! It’s all wrong! By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

    Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

    Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

    Let’s remember this was written by a fellow who survived the hellish trenches of WW1. A conflict that felt ridiculously pointless for all the bloodshed it caused.

    Here we are in our own figurative trenches. We are weathering our own crisis after crisis, wondering if it’s all worth it in the end. “But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.”

    We can’t give up and give in to despair, because friends, family, people we don’t even know, need us to all keep each other going. Our time will come. Don’t give up on exposing this nonsense in the most loving way you can, showing people alternatives, and building the resistance to State and corporate tyranny. One changed mind at a time.