I haven't written anything in a long time. Partially because I just didn't have much on my mind, but mostly because I've been so busy. The last year has been mostly taken up with work, school, and being shut in for most of the year due to the pandemic. I was so unhappy at work that I was looking to leave, and just happened to get an email about a scholarship to Providence's medical assistant program and thought what the hell. After jumping into that, I ended up in the ER with a spontaneously collapsed lung. And then after that, a global pandemic hit. But somehow, I managed to pass all my classes, graduate, and pass the national accreditation exam and am officially a medical assistant! In all of that time, though, I've felt spiritually dead. Most churches and other places are closed. My time has mostly been full of school work and studying. And with a few exceptions, the way people have acted has made me doubt the goodness of human beings. There just doesn't seem to be room for truly spiritual people.
About a week ago, for example, a caregiver at work killed themselves by jumping off of the top of the parking garage. Providence didn't really address the incident beyond a short email that was never even sent to my department. But everyone knew about it, and it's been on my mind a lot. Who knows why they did it (part of it was apparently work related according to a note that was rumoured to have been left behind), but it makes me think about how many people out there are suffering. How many are labouring under the weight of depression or some other form of mental illness? How many people are unable to cope with the omnipresent stresses that they experience on a daily basis, whether from abuse or privation or some limitation on their life that makes life difficult to bear?
And it makes me think how sick our society is and the inhumane ways we treat others, whether through conditioning or because it gives us some advantage in our lives. The poor and houseless. BIPOC. Women. The mentally and physically ill. The elderly. LGBTQ+ people. People with disabilities. Those who fall outside of our homogeneous social groups. Etc. It's diseased all the way through and I'm honestly not sure it's even curable anymore. The world that we've created isolates us. It pits us against one another, whether out of bigotry or competition. It turns our relationships into transactions and feeds off our vitality like a vampire, leaving us tired and drained and empty inside, and making any sadness or despair we may feel that much deeper.
It's also built upon the exploitation and oppression of various segments of society and physically destroying our planet in the process. And it doesn't take people's health seriously, treating access to care of any sort as a commodity. Is it any wonder that people are increasingly unable to connect with one another and find no meaning in their own existence or hope for the future? I know that there's not much we can do as individuals to save the world or prevent someone who is determined to end their life from doing so, but besides working with others to try to make the world a place worth living, we can strive to connect with, respect, and love those close to us. And I hope I can do a better job of that, too. But if I'm being honest with myself, I feel like I'm just as self-absorbed and cynical as the rest of the world. While I glimpse the goodness and desire to strive towards it, I'm caught up in the same rat race, working all day at a job I don't love so I have enough money to keep a roof over my head and spending the rest of it trying to keep myself sane and get a modicum of enjoyment out of being alive.
It's a depressing thought, but I don't treat people much better. I'm always stressed and feeling stretched thin. I'm short with people because they're short with me, trapped in the same cycle of acting and reacting negatively, making the mental ruts deeper and deeper and harder to get out of. And like many others, I self-medicate with things like alcohol and Netflix, doing whatever I can to escape my own life through distraction and imagination. Truly spiritual people seem like an endangered species that's confined to a few secluded habitats, monasteries and hermitages that house the last of those who have the courage and strength to truly renounce this world to strive for a better one. And as much as I wish I were one of them, I can't seem to work up the courage or the strength.
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