Nah’msayin

The World Sucks, But Your Friends Don’t

Graphic Alexey Lazarev

Not all evil is created equal, but that’s hard to notice when there’s so much of it.

It’s been hard to notice anything but evil, really, in these first few months of 2016.

It’s everything and it’s everywhere.

ISIS. Roosh V. Donald Trump. Modern slavery. Jian Ghomeshi. Global warming. The refugee crisis. Tar sands. Zika virus. The Canadian dollar. Student debt. HIV/AIDS. Ted Cruz. Super PACs. Bashar Al-Assad. Postmedia layoffs. Kim Jong-un. Football players dying of CTE. Vladimir Putin. White supremacy. Flint, Michigan. Mass incarceration. Economic inequality. Uber. The Saudi arms deal. Bill Cosby. Missing and murdered Aboriginal women. American gun control. Trans erasure. Police brutality. Pro-lifers. Rape culture.

Also, there’s the fact that this list is so incomplete as to be almost meaningless.

Right now, the world sucks—and trying to make it better is, surprisingly, actually quite difficult (if it isn’t, you’re doing it wrong).

Because it’s so hard, it’s easy to let the long list of evils get the better of you.

Lately it’s definitely been getting the better of me: it’s only February, I’m already tired, and I’m only just realizing how screwed up everything is. I need energy to go forward, because the world doesn’t care if I’m tired. So where am I supposed to get it?

Answer: from all around—from the people that I care about, and from those that care about me.

I don’t really know anything, but I love my friends, and while that doesn’t make things okay, it makes it feel okay, and that’s something, right?

They help me feel grounded when I look around and see the trackless hell-scapes we’ve yet to traverse.

Maybe take this as a gentle reminder to love your friends, too. Never stop trying to make things better, obviously, but give yourself the chance to hug someone you think is neat when stuff gets tough.

We’re all we’ve got. Find a little joy with your fellow humans—even if it’s out of spite.