March 8, 2022
There is some advice pertaining to life stages that can be frustrating to hear during those stages, but in retrospect, quite helpful. Statements like “don’t be anxious,” “just do $x,” and others feature chief among these, which pester those who are actually in this situation. Those receiving these seemingly useless platitudes attribute their uselessness to the giver’s distance from the situation, as in a fifty-year-old giving advice to someone in high school. And they’d be mostly right; it is hard to unravel the second order meaning of these platitudes from the younger perspective. Unfortunately, they often may be the most efficient way to deliver this information. In this, I wanted to unravel one of the basic platitudes as an example.
In “don’t be anxious,” the receiver hears an invalidation of their feelings; that their feelings are unimportant and can vanish on a whim. The first part is false, but the second part holds some truth. The feelings of anxiety are important! They often help motivate a person toward their goal or reveal some inner belief. But these emotions can vanish, given some work. What this platitude means is that one can do work to not be anxious, and you ought to do it. It asks the receiver to analyze themselves and attempt to get at the root of the issue, but in a way that is utterly incomprehensible to someone in that situation.
On February 27, 2022, I thought it would be a great idea to create some sort of content - writing, art, coding, etc. - every day of the next month. Luckily, the alliteration worked out. This should be the eighth post in the series.