Awake in Despair

I woke up already deep in thought today, and that's never a good sign for an optimistic day. I struggle with despair and depression even when there's nothing to worry about, and every time I do, I re-watch two videos. One from 2019:

And this one from last year, which is possibly more relevant right now:

I woke up today with that feeling of "nothing matters, so why am I doing this?" The feeling is compounded by the type of reading I tend to do. Something about my brain just wants to know things, no matter how bleak. A friend, for instance, introduced me to Spooky Lake Month on TikTok/Youtube which is a woman doing short stories about creepy hydrological-related things every day for the month of October. Do I NEED to know that there are lakes that can explode with enough carbon dioxide to kill everyone within a 100 mile radius? I do not, but I do take comfort sometimes in the fact that we CAN know those things.

Another thing that helps me is the understanding that humanity has survived because we can cooperate with each other (and do, every single day in myriad ways). 

The takeaway from those videos, for me, is that despair is valid, but it is not a complete picture. If I stay here and wallow, then I have failed to take into account all of the things we have already done, and continue to do, to try and wrest a better future from a messy present. Even more reason to be kind to your neighbors.