(Insert brilliantly composed bio here)

I think I would describe this as overwhelming times.

Hope and despair crowd and mingle together, brushing shoulders like passengers on an overpacked train.

They call it the "attention economy". The way everything feels so loud, so fast paced, so much. It's on purpose, a marketing technique.

The TV wants to tell you about the horrible thing that just happened. The internet wants to show you a person you can get mad at and argue with. They've designed themselves to do this. To stress you out. And it's... disheartening.

I recall being a real idealist of a kid. For a long time I wholeheartedly believed the best in everyone around me and viewed cynicism as a perspective to either resist or use sparingly.

Then those pre-teen years hit you with barrages of santa-isn't-real, cruel bullies, toxic friendships, puberty... and the transition to adulthood is broadly culturally accepted as a waning of your "naive" childlike ways and maturing into a skeptical, cynical adult willing to accept their role in capitalist society.

That phase made me feel cheated. When I was a kid, the world was kind and beautiful. Most of us feel that way as kids, at least some of the time. But so few adults can ever convince themselves to see the world through that lens again. That doesn't feel right to me. That doesn't feel like maturity. That feels like despair. It feels like sticking your head in the sand for the sake of an unsatisfying life that will be socially deemed a "success".

Luckily, many people out there are coming around to viewing the world that way. And at times I wonder how much of my own fears regarding how deeply rooted cynicism and despair are in society may be due to my own forced "maturing" I'm still trying to unlearn. I want to walk through this world with childlike wonder and joy. I want to believe the best in people and have healthy conversations with them. Learn from them. Help them and let them help me. That world sounds beautiful. And I think the first step to getting there is believing in people. Believing in the good in the world.

Everywhere I look, people who echo my own feelings and hopes for the world appear. Like plants defiantly growing between pavement cracks the human heart can still be heard over the droning of capitalism and imperialism.

But that drone is still loud and hard to ignore. Still I fix my attention on the kindness, the hope, the joy. I will choose to focus there. The dissonance will need to be worked through somewhere inside of me, where hope and despair mingle together, brushing shoulders like passengers on an overpacked train.

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