Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
I don’t think I’m wrong in saying this: to different degrees, we’re all at the end of it. The Earth burns as governments dimly consider banning plastic straws by 2065. The pandemic never seems to end, and then there’s war in Ukraine, inflation, shootings, social injustice, a film with Maripier Morin, there is reason to think that the apocalypse is upon us.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m better informed or because things are worse than before. Maybe it’s a clever mix of the two? Still, there are a lot of people who find it difficult to be happy and light-hearted. And spending your vacation in a queue at the airport or in a monster traffic jam on the road to Gaspésie, it might perk you up for a few hours, but I’m afraid it won’t be enough in the long run.
So what to do? I wouldn’t have made this introduction if I didn’t have a great solution to offer you.
[Avertissement : l’auteur de ces lignes n’est ni psychologue, ni journaliste, ni même un influenceur santé et bien-être qui aurait eu un diplôme après trois heures dans une formation louche à Val-David, alors il te faudra sans doute en prendre et en laisser.]
We only have one life, it will probably be shorter than we think, so why spend it cluttering up with sources of irritation? My idea: get rid, partially or permanently, of some of these sources of irritation over which you have control. In particular, by cleaning up your social networks.
On my side, I started: a friend (whom I don’t know) is fired climatosceptic? I’m barring it! Another (whom I don’t know much) prefers not to hear women’s claims and goes a little glorious #NotAllMen to move on to another topic? I’m barring it! A stranger doesn’t like my columns and lands on my Facebook to insult me? I cross it twice!
Here are some other tricks you can easily apply:
Stop reading the hate columnists, who have been rambling on about the same thing for years anyway. As we know, social networks are a vicious circle: the more time we spend reading content that puts us off, the more the algorithm offers. But the reverse is also true! The less we read, the less we see. A very simple way to smile again!
Replace for a week or two your reading of short stories from the United States with that of very light summer novels. You’ll catch up on the killings, religious right advances, and science denial when you get back from vacation.
Temporarily suspend your use of Tinder and go drink lukewarm rosé or beer in a park with your gang of friends instead. Not trying to find the rare pearl in a sea of weird people for a few days, it’s restful. (There seem to be a lot of pot-bellied men holding a fish in their hands. Is that supposed to be sexy?)
If you’re addicted to your Instagram account and staring at your feed for hours, subscribe to accounts like the_happy_broadcast, goodnews_movement, tanksgoodnews and more. They only share good news! Yes, it still exists! (There is surely also good news in French, I imagine. You can suggest some to me.)
Remember that if you want to take a break and not reveal anything about your life on social networks for 1 day or 2 or 10 or 1000, your subscribers will not suffer. As for you, their survival depends mainly on oxygen, water and coffee and not on your selfies in front of Percé Rock or in the airport toilets where you’ve been sleeping for three days.
If you feel like writing a long comment in response to someone you think is stupid in the media or on social media, go for a walk instead. Breathe. Roll in the grass. Dance. Pet a dog. In short, change your mind. Remember that even if you wrote to this person to tell them how stupid you think they are, they wouldn’t become less so by reading you.
Obviously, there are a host of small sources of irritation that we can never get rid of. Your neighbours’ stupid metallic chime will continue to make its useless din, my mother-in-law’s enraged neighbor will continue to bang on the ceiling reproaching her for walking around her apartment (with her feet, what a nerve!), my Sodastream machine will continue to spit water everywhere rather than carbonate it.
It takes a little effort, but come on, clean up and I wish you a happy and light end to the summer!