I don’t know how to put this succinctly, but I read recently about someone feeling like they’re an outsider looking into the world of “normal” people. I feel a bit of the opposite, like I’m a “normal” person just realizing how shit it is to be part of the problems in our world right now-I’d much rather be an outsider to all of it so I couldn’t accept responsibility. I’m just as much of a contributor to everything bad as any other peer in the world. It’s not like I can pinpoint one certain thing I do that makes me feel that way, but I realize how often I judge other people for thinking they’re the perpetrators in everything wrong with society, when I’m not doing anything that differently from the rest of them. It goes the opposite way in that no matter how helpful I think I’m being to contribute to some “greater good,” I still feel I’m doing the bare minimum, and feel culpable in my smallness and ability to enact long lasting in the way I’d like to see the world.
In school we teach physical hygiene. So why not emotional hygiene? Education should include basics of how the mind works, such as the dynamics of our emotions; a healthy regulation of emotional impulse and the cultivation of attention, empathy, and caring; learning to handle conflicts nonviolently; and a sense of oneness with humanity.