I\u2019ve become a skeptic of everything related to self-help. All these strange concepts\u2014which are no longer strange but common\u2014don\u2019t resonate with me, nor with the way I understand how to get out of the holes we fall into, or sometimes dig ourselves into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t want to sound pessimistic, but I don\u2019t believe in the idea that \u201cbeing okay depends on oneself.\u201d The circumstances of daily life can, at times, make you want to crawl under the covers and not come out until the storm has passed and something better takes its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And no, I don\u2019t think it depends solely on oneself to be okay or to get out of those holes. Because in the end, being okay does depend on how we perceive our own reality\u2014but it also depends on others, very much on others. It depends on the warmth of an embrace; on the way your partner looks at you on a Sunday afternoon; on the sound of your daughter\u2019s breathing when she finally falls asleep in your arms. It depends on one of your favorite songs playing, almost by coincidence, just as the cable connecting your phone to the car stereo starts to fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It depends on the feeling you get from reading a line of a poem by Idea Vilari\u00f1o that you looked up online after hearing someone mention it in a caf\u00e9. It depends on your favorite singer releasing an album in the middle of a Thursday that otherwise would have had nothing special about it. It depends on buying your favorite beer after a shitty day at work, and on the person at the store offering you another one because there was an extra in the count. It depends on feeling safe when you get home and finding your dog already waiting for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, it also depends on dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It depends on so much\u2014on so many people, on so many things; sometimes on very little, or with very little. But always, or almost always, one has to do with the other. That\u2019s why we\u2019re human; that\u2019s why life exists: to live it with oneself, to live it with others, to live it, even, in spite of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n