Early Wednesday morning, my husband told me that the government had shut down. “Huh,” I thought. The news hit me about the way it would have had he said, “It’s going to rain later,” or, “There’s a new Batman movie coming out.” I was interested, sure. But there was something about the news that my brain couldn’t really hold onto.
Maybe back in January, it felt like the Trump administration was “flooding the zone.” Today, I often feel like I live in a submarine, and the memory of the way things were is just a blurry, indistinct land mass I can sometimes make out with my periscope. A lot of my friends have stopped reading the news. Others clutch onto their phones like their lives depend on it, constantly sifting through the onslaught of updates. I’ve tried both. They didn’t help. So what are we to do?
Ana Galvañ for NPR
Nietzsche famously said, “He who has a ‘why’ for which to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’” It’s a quotation I first came across in Viktor Frankl’s famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The message, as I understood it, was that when people can connect to some greater sense of purpose in life, they’re often able to endure unimaginable circumstances, and find ways to focus their time and energy. They can start to separate what matters from what doesn’t.
But identifying that meaning isn’t always simple. With so much going on in the world, it can sometimes feel like everything’s a crisis, but nothing really matters.
So fam, this week I’m asking for your help: Where do you find meaning in this day and age? What are the things that connect you to a sense of purpose? Is it through connecting to loved ones? Participating in events with your local community? Communing with the divine? Let me know here. Each week, I’ll be sharing some of your responses in this newsletter. As the nights start getting longer, let’s find a way to share some light with each other.
-Leah Donnella, senior editor
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ON THE POD
Why is Malala Yousafzai so revered in the West while being much less popular in her home country of Pakistan? On this week's episode, we unpack how Pakistani skepticism of Malala extends from a suspicion of U.S. and other foreign interests.
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