Each micro-decision is a balancing act of managing personal care with maintaining relationships. While some decisions allow you to further yourself and your relationships—for example, going to the gym with a friend—even trivial decisions often require sacrifice for one over the other.
This story starts at 5 a.m., though it easily could have begun much later. With a bus scheduled to leave at 9 a.m. from a station barely five minutes away from my hotel, a few more hours of sleep would’ve been the logical decision.
So how can love span both mutual and unreciprocated feelings, encompass romance and platonism, and be both given and felt? By using the word in such a variety of ways, we are simultaneously overgeneralizing and severely restricting love in our language.
You see, I have recently found myself feeling stuck in a bog of bleh—a void of lethargy and nothingness. In it, identity feels irrelevant, purpose seems excessive, ideals feel presumptuous, and goals are downright impossible.
Your phone—that little device that, for many people, is the one thing we bring with us wherever we go. You might even be using it right now to read this. Supposedly, it connects us to the world. Yet somehow, it still manages to disconnect us from each other.
Many things will define this generation. Our commitment to climate change, our consistent political action, and—according to the latest TikTok microtrend—our “mob wife” era.
Upon returning to familiar routes, anxious anticipation began to monopolize my internal dialogue as I drove the car. Nerves surrounding my upcoming second semester at Boston College engulfed my commute to most outings.
The room was a display of my inner thoughts: unorganized and chaotic. As the space got more cluttered, I spent my days criticizing everything that I did and every aspect of my being.
There’s even evidence for why reflecting on a past self and predicting our future is such a difficult exercise. While it’s relatively easy to recall our past feelings and recognize the differences between then and now, it’s a much larger struggle to project our own futures.
We are living in “a system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem.” So maybe I just rewatched Blade Runner 2049, but that does not mean it isn’t true.
