Life is right around us. Live it! - From the cluttered desk with Keith Roulston

We’re in late February and, even though spring isn’t that far off, with all of its hope, many people are depressed.

 

Even aside from marking two years of the war in Ukraine or the terrible tragedy befalling the people of Palestine or Israel, we’re facing the angst of the winter season, although it isn’t as bad, with this comparatively mild winter, as we’re used to, in Ontario.
In a recent column in The Globe and Mail, Profs. Norman Farb of the University of Toronto Mississauga and Zindel Segal of the University of Toronto Scarborough wrote about the connections between bad weather and despair, a feeling of being trapped in an environment that drains, rather than nourishes the spirit. “In such weather, it is tempting to put our heads down and simply try to muddle through, to avoid the world around us until the season turns.”

 

And yet modern smartphones and tablets offer “a constant escape from waking life into a more controllable world,” they write.
“The trouble is this: When we get used to sticking our heads in the sand, who is to say that we will even notice when the weather improves?” they wonder.

 

And yet, anxiety and depression rates have doubled since 2012, a trend that is not a product of changing seasons, they point out. “In our quest to avoid the ‘blahs’ of everyday life, have we run into another sort of trap?”

 

Everyone but me seems to have a smartphone these days. It often seems as if life couldn’t go on without them, when I sit in a waiting room and look around and nearly everyone is reading their phone, or watching some program available to them because of it.

 

But not only does the internet provide something to occupy people when they might have been mulling over their own life, it gives them immediate access to ways to react to the things they don’t like.

 

Recently, Jill was telling me about a guy who posts fish and chips recipes online. Each day, he said, he has to cast aside about 200 negative e-mails before he gets to the positive messages he wants to read.

 

I must say, I wonder who, among people I see on the street or in a restaurant, might be among these anonymous critics. Were there people I know, for instance, among the people who posted fake pornographic photos of superstar Taylor Swift because television couldn’t resist showing her reaction in her private box at the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs’ games when her boyfriend, Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce made, or didn’t make, a play.

 

Right-wing critics take support of former U.S. President Donald Trump to new heights when they send anonymous threats to the judges who find him guilty of charges against him, let alone to the people who make accusations that are proven true by the court. Trump claims to have nothing to do with these threats, yet he regularly charges that those who find him guilty are doing it in service of current President Joe Biden, who will also be Trump’s opponent if, as expected, Trump wins the Republican Party’s nomination.

 

Meanwhile, long-time Republicans who remain loyal to the long-term beliefs of the party step aside, because they see no future for themselves in the party as long as Donald Trump holds the majority of the party’s voters in his thrall. At the same time, many party reps who originally reacted against him after the January 6, 2021 riot that attempted to set aside Biden’s electoral victory, have read the tea-leaves and rallied to Trump’s team for this fall’s election. They’re on the line because they can’t “stick their head in the sand” as Farb and Segal say, or hide behind the anonymity of the internet.

 

It’s enough to have those of us who don’t escape the world want to get out a cell phone.

 

Maybe Professors Farb and Segal help explain why rates of anxiety and depression have doubled since 2012. In general, commentators have opined that people tend to be more critical and downright negative, especially since the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Whatever the reason, we need to do something to get in a better mood. In reality, now that COVID-19 has receded into a constant, but generally manageable problem, we live in a better time than at any time in human history. Yes there are things we wish would change, like wars, but those of us lucky to live thousands of miles from these wars live in day-to-day peace.

 

Rather than escape, get off your cell phone and live in the real world, surrounded by your loving family and, particularly locally, your supportive community. Remember that the merchants on your main street and the local service clubs matter more than the international giants that sell you groceries, clothes and furniture.

 

Life is right here, right around us. Live it!