Sorry To Bother You With This, But I Just Don't Really Know What To Do And Would Like Some Advice.

Sorry to bother you with this, but I just don't really know what to do and would like some advice.

I'm a teenager in high school and I've been reading more and more about politics and the world and it just leaves me feeling tired and hopeless.

I see violence against women every day and both political parties of my country encourage it. I feel scared and hopeless and I don't know what to do about it. I'm scared that I'll be attacked in one way or another.

Do you have any advice for this kind of thing?

Society is cyclical. One generation learns a lesson and teaches it to the children who take it to an extreme, then their children learn a lesson and teach it to their children who take it to an extreme. Like the width of your high-heeled shoes, or the height of your waistband or the size of your hair.

One thing we have seen over and over and over again is that things will swing to the furthest possible edge of a dichotomy, and when it it can go no further it swings back the other way.

It’s a scary time to be living, yes. The collapse of Rome was probably pretty scary too. The idea of big things changing like that is scary.

But also, we’re not nobility, we’re peasants, and those of us in North America are still very very blessed right now. As bad as things are, through all of (vague gesture upwards), we’re still going to have to work. We’re still going to go to school. We’re still going to wash the dishes and scoop cat litter. And through all that, we’re going to see our neighbours, and our teachers, and random kids on the street, and cashiers and homeless folks and middle-aged women named Nancy, every damn day of the week.

And while we can’t control our governments (apparently) or our economy or the fucking price of beef, we’re going to see each other far more than we’re going to see politicians and oil tycoons.

Civilizations collapse all the time. Governments fall apart all the time. The people don’t have to collapse with it.

So what you do is the best you can. You wash the dishes. You scoop the cat litter. You go to work and you go to school and keep doing all the boring and mundane and unglamorous things they don’t tell you about the end of the Roman Empire and you CARE ABOUT PEOPLE and be KIND to them, and then when you come across a clear and baldfaced injustice in front of you that you can DO something about you think to yourself, “I could help, but I don’t want to, because it’ll be hard and uncomfortable and awkward and I don’t know what I’m doing and I’ll hate it so much the entire time,” and then you do something anyway.

Because if you’re going to be scared no matter what, you might as well be scared making things better. You might as well be scared with a friend. You might as well be scared while you keep the world moving than scared in a hole in your yard, ‘cause without the bomb, the only real difference between a lone man in a bomb shelter and a dead body in a casket is a can of meat and an air filter.

Things could be worse. Things could GET worse. We’re not all going to be okay. That sucks. Now grab whoever’s on your left and hold on.