Youth anxiety is bumming me out (trust me, it won't last)

For a few years now, I've watched anxiety settle in with a lot of people around me. A kind of pessimism that's become almost normal. And it makes me deeply sad. I want to bring a bit of nuance, and maybe another way of looking at things.

It's an anxiety that doesn't come from Instagram, pandemics or school (even if those play a part, let's be honest)

It feels more like it comes from this constant "everything is about to collapse" vibe.

Collapse and degrowth are very profitable businesses

"We've used up all our oil, our resources, the oceans are going to swallow us…"

We didn't bring down infant mortality with hope.
We invented modern medicine.
We didn't start talking across the world by shouting louder.
We invented the Internet! (what an insane invention)

I don't think degrowth is what's going to clean up our oceans.

I think we (humans) lack a bit of humility. We think we know everything, control everything, but all it takes is one day in the mountains, looking at how huge nature is, to realize that next to it, we're way less powerful than we think.

We think we've already discovered everything, that we've hit the bottom of our resources, that there isn't a single drop of anything left.
Recently, Google DeepMind built an AI that discovered a bit more than 2 million new crystals, including 380,000 stable materials. We thought we knew our resources, when in reality we only know a tiny percentage of them. (That's good news!)

Trying new things in life is already hard: we're scared of what people will think, scared of using the wrong words, scared of looking ridiculous. And on top of that, every little thing we do gets tied to the collapse: we're told growth is over, eating meat is bad, traveling is bad, even flushing after a pee could almost earn us a spot in hell (ok I'm exaggerating ahah)

How are we supposed to get up in the morning with a smile and keep working on our plans for the future?

Doing things differently

I suggest we do things differently. Let's look at what we can change around us, the things we actually have an impact on right now.

We tend to focus on problems that are really hard to solve, when actually, we can make ourselves proud, and make the people we love proud, just by starting to do things at our own scale:

have I checked in on the people I love?
have I had the guts to bring up that "unspoken thing" with my girlfriend?
am I giving myself the chance to do the things I love in my life?
is my apartment tidy?

I think that instead of complaining at protests, our energy as young people is probably better spent building projects:

videos,
sports groups,
blogs,
scientific studies,
apps,
reading,
podcasts,
YouTube channels,
newsletters,
events,
local projects in our cities,
startups,
open source tools,
art projects,
documentaries,
books,
educational projects,
challenges between friends to get better together.

I think we can create beautiful things even with very little. The people who say you need resources have just never tried.

Bringing a project into the world is 1000x more inspiring than complaining about what's wrong.
Choosing to believe in a beautiful future doesn't guarantee anything, but not believing in it only guarantees the opposite.

Obviously I think there are things to improve, but I don't think paralyzing a whole generation from trying things is the answer.

I hope that was easy enough to digest, send me a lil' message if you read this far :)

See you soon,