WHY WE ALL FEEL LIKE GIVING UP (AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT)

MISERERE, GEORGE ROUALT, 1922

Look at the world with me. What do you see in people?

I see people feeling like giving up. Surrendering, throwing their hands up, in the teeth of an unravelling world. What’s the point, they seem to be asking, of even trying?

They’re giving up on every aspect of life. On relationships. It’s become a cultural trend by now, women giving up on men, men acting like children. Giving up on careers and professions, as stable jobs become things of a bygone era. Giving up on the future, shrugging while democracy and modernity are ripped away from them. Giving up on freedom itself, human agency, letting the algorithm make all their choices for them.

People are acquiescing, succumbing, capitulating. To the failed systems that have failed them. And they feel like failures. Humiliated, undone, hopeless. But to be failed is not to have failed.

I understand the feeling of wanting to give up. I’ve failed so many times, it’s comical by now. What's the point of trying, when…? When the most vicious and barbaric seem to get ahead to the point of becoming trillionaires? When our systems reward incompetence, irresponsilbity, malfeasance, with eye-popping sums? When life itself seems like a perpetual struggle, and working hard and playing by the rules gets you less than nowhere? What’s the…point?

What’s going on here is this. We talked recently about brutalism. Predatory systems have demoralized and dispirited people to the point that they’re bewildered, lost, and disoriented. Nothing seems to matter anymore, we say, which means: being a good and decent person counts for nothing anymore. And so up has become down. It’s hard to understand what a life is or should be anymore.

Giving up is not the answer. It never is, but I feel like maybe it’s worth saying again. Emphatically.

The answer is to take control of your life. In every aspect of it. And orient yourself again anew. I know that the world is spinning on the wrong axis these days, that everything seems unfair, stupid, cruel, and perverse. It is. And for that very reason, it’s all the more crucial to take control of your life.

Let me make that more concrete. Now you must not just withstand but build. This is the central question of a time like this. Build wealth. Knowledge. Wisdom. Relationships. Love, truth, a sense of purpose. Equanimity. Poise. Choices. Plans. A sense of strength comes from all this. This is what taking control of your life is.

It isn’t anymore just sort of fumbling your way through an age of collapse, and hoping for the best. It isn’t doomscrolling, doomtrading, letting the algorithm decide your life for you, or just sort of choosing the numbing agent du jour. Now you must build, for a future that is more uncertain and risky by the day.

I used to warn you that we’re hitting a turning point in history. And here we are, at it. Shock after shock is now hitting us, like thunderbolts. An energy crisis, which will become stagflation, jobs disappearing, global order breaking down, macroeconomies disintegrating. It’s an endless list. The world has made the wrong choices, and that’s why you feel so disoriented. It’s why so many feel like giving up.

Now take control. I know that the above is a little bit…vague. That’s OK. It’s there to help you get your spark back. That happens deep in the unconscious. It’s not about overthinking it. But feeling it.

When we give up, what do lose? Our spark. That thing that feels tiny, but is the river of love flowing through us. Love for life, for being, for each other, for our brief time here on this earth.

That spark is going from us, and without it, what do we have to give to each other? That is how a world ends up taking, descending into the abyss like ours is.

Take control of your life. Don’t give up. Nurture your spark. Let its fire and heat and light guide you through this darkness. It is all that can. Let it come back to life, and you will too. This is the truest test of times like these.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy)