You are aware… What’s next?

Let’s face it we are aware. Painfully aware. The world we live in has never been louder, nor the truth — with the immense outpour of knowledge — has never been so visible, so accessible and yet so unbearable.    

From clips of Gaza, Sudan, to the whirlpool of news showing how the world is slowly decaying, it has tremendously plagued our social media. We see it all. We consume it every time we open our Instagram. Even though most of the information is primarily narrated by the self-claimed social media gurus, we are, for the most part, able to filter the truth. 

Every scroll, every reel and every “breaking news” serve as a reminder that the age we live in has made desensitisation a survival instinct.    

Too much. That’s the phrase that has terrorised my mind lately. There is just too much of everything — grief, chaos, empathy, and trauma. We have an inborn capability to care, but our minds are not equipped to process this constant presence of unbearable and incomprehensible grief and brutality that exists all around us. And so, we become numb instead.    

You see, most of our elders believe that we are a lazy generation. That we do not value the things that our life has blessed us with. For them, we are ignorant and ambitionless. But what they failed to realise is that it is quite the opposite, and rather we are trapped in a system that has played a trick on us.   

How can we find hope in a world that doesn’t seem to have any space for us? Why do I need to work hard when the threat of AI taking over my job looms over us? Why do I need to work hard when even an entry-level job requires a minimum of two years of experience? Why am I part of a society built on the silent suffering of so many?  

So, no, I am not thankless–-just lost perhaps.   

But what can we do to survive and keep our sanity intact?    

Resist what the world has normalized: cruelty and apathy.

Not everything needs to be consumed — not every brand or reel that screams “trendy” or “this is what it means to be cool and relevant” deserves your click, peace of mind, and your attention. Nestle and all those corporate giants who sell “ethics” in the form of glossy bottles — ethics that have primarily bled the third world and every possible vulnerable individual dry. Avoid over-consumption and stop wasting your energy on things that do not deserve it.    

We humans can never outrun the monsters under our beds, especially when they have latched themselves onto us in the form of commodified lust and greed.    

Undeniably, truth gives us purpose — it frees us from ignorance — but it is truly an ugly and brutal path. For the past two years, I have witnessed just how hideous it can be. The immense cruelty of humans, the fancy speeches at the UN that only condemn it while the horror gets silently normalised, and they say that it is “complicated” and “out of our hands”.    

Perhaps we are not blinded by ignorance in this era of abundant knowledge — perhaps we are haunted by it. But we must know what is right and wrong. We owe it to humanity not to amplify further pain. Awareness should not paralyse us; it should refine us. It should allow us to make the right choices.    

Yet remember that empathy burnout is real, but do not lose it. Feel, but do not let it swallow you or eat you from the inside. Absolutely, stand for what is right, but keep your sanity intact. Calm down. Even the sun sets every day to rise again the next day. You can’t lose yourself trying to bear a burden that is far too heavy for you to carry.    

Perhaps the biggest act of resistance is to live well.    

The trick, if there is one, lies in the small things of life — the simplicity which social media has made us hate or has commodified.    

You are one of the fortunate few. You have a life of your own. You are secure in your home. You have opportunities in a world that has proudly stripped millions of people of the right to their own lives.    

So live. Laugh. Create. Leap. Find joy in moments that we often overlook — the way the sun dances on our windowpane, the thrill of learning something new, the feeling of pride after finishing a simple task, or just surviving a day that felt never-ending. Water your plants. Laugh at a stupid meme. Explore new hobbies and allow yourself to be relentlessly bad at them.     

Just pursue small, tender things that take us back to being “simply” human in a world that is too mechanical and far too drunk on perfection.  

Take it all in! Claim your joy! Be delusional. Let grief know that it has failed to break us. That it doesn’t have a claim on you nor on the world.     

We have witnessed the world slowly bleeding before us. Yet, somehow, we still need to wake up every day and go on with our lives.    

That is the curse of being alive today. To know it all and still live.    

To feel but not to collapse.    

To not avoid it, yet not let it haunt you.    

To stay human, through it all — somehow.    

So yes, you are viciously aware. The next step? Stay sane. That is itself a resistance — a resistance for a better, more conscious world — one that hopefully becomes happy again.