Thread by @beldonstevens, In a class Discord server, some of my students were talking about [...]

In a class Discord server, some of my students were talking about feeling bad about not getting much work done—and also about feeling bad. One said that they feel they have “no valid excuse” for apathy and depression

… reader, I shout-typed to shake the windows

I share the result in case anyone else needs (or simply wants) shouting about how *dehumanizing* a system is, when its purpose is to make you, a human being, feel just responsible enough for events that are beyond your control

both 1) to buy more things and 2) not to lay blame where it belongs, with people in power. An *evil* system

In reply to the student fearing “no valid excuse,” I therefore wrote:

With due respect, the valid excuse--or rather, the extremely valid reason--is, you are living through what must be, by a long shot, the single most stressful and disorienting thing that has happened in your lifetime, much less in your personal experience

You are not failing, but it& #39;s natural that you (all of us) would feel that way, since 1) the whole public culture is organized around a shallow concept of & #39;individual choice,& #39; mainly for marketing purposes (e.g., you get to choose whatever you want to stream!! "hooray!"),

an idea that makes it seem as if 2) you are individually responsible for all things about your life--and then 3) here you are in the midst of something over which you have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL

YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. You CANNOT be, and the notion -- which is not yours, it& #39;s imposed from without so that you will feel just bad enough to buy more things, but not so bad you stop buying more things –

The notion that YOU are failing because THE WORLD is falling apart can GO FUCK ITSELF. I will be damned if I let a student of mine fear that they are somehow to blame for feeling bad during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC

Up until now, the closest I, a non-believer, have come to contact with the divine is ... most of my life. I have been so fortunate in every way I can imagine, centrally because I get to spend most of my time sharing beautiful things with thoughtful people

But more recently, I have found myself in the presence of the miraculous, insofar as twice a week, every week, in a terrible corporate medium and, let me say again, IN PLAGUE TIMES, [my students] have come to my class because [they] want to say things about art

Are you KIDDING me

Like for real, you& #39;re FUCKING joking!

Every day you get up in the midst of this maelstrom, you have succeeded that day

Even when you don& #39;t get up, you& #39;re not failing: you& #39;re responding understandably to nearly everything you& #39;ve known falling apart

I need to raise my voice here so you can hear me over what you have been TAUGHT to say to yourself, as if it is your heart& #39;s native language. "I& #39;m failing at this." That& #39;s not you talking. I acknowledge that the feeling is real, and there& #39;s no arguing away a feeling

That& #39;s the power-structure talking, so that your potential collective action and capacity for agency stay fragmented, letting the people and institutions who are actually responsible for this situation being so much worse than it needed to be, get off with memes instead of trials

You talking, your heart& #39;s native language is, "I am only seeming to fail because this cannot be succeeded at"

and "I am feeling bad not because I am weak but because things are terrible"

and "I wish the world were different so that I could shine the way I know I can"

and "I wish someone in charge would say out loud, We& #39;re so sorry this is so hard"

and "I want to feel better, but it& #39;s okay that I don& #39;t feel good: that& #39;s not my fault, and in fact, it& #39;s the only natural response to things being so bad"

So what can you do?

For what it& #39;s worth, keep telling yourself this, thinking your way to understanding it, and eventually not just knowing but feeling its truth:

You are not--you cannot be--responsible for something that is out of your control

That confuses disappointment ("I wish things were different") with regret ("I wish I& #39;d done differently"). You don& #39;t have anything to regret, here. Be disappointed about? Yes, but not yourself

You can only be responsible for what you can control. Right now, that& #39;s very little--and that& #39;s not your fault. Why so little? Because so many truly gigantic, incomprehensibly complexly interlocking systems are collapsed. You haven& #39;t failed

The breakdowns are systemic, and it& #39;s only the deeply exploitative and psychologically damaging global economic system that needs you to believe, falsely, that you can solve this problem, as if 1) the problem is you (wrong) and 2) it can be solved with some thing (wrong)

I can& #39;t command this, but you should feel free--because you are free--to be kinder to yourselves about what is falsely imposed as a sense of personal failure, but what is in fact a perfectly normal and indeed, if distressing, healthy emotional response to systems letting you down

My main advice, then, if it even counts as that, is to focus even more on small pleasures, possibly very small things and moments, as anchors or handholds for your days, weeks, and beyond. With that focus, tell yourself once more that you are *not to blame* for the situation

... and are only responding naturally to having to live through it.

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