I’ve been enjoying Alicia’s continued curiosity and willingness to explore questions that many of us miss. Her recent post got me thinking.
What does it mean to have a healthy mind?
“But I don’t think a healthy mind is one that feels happy all the time. A healthy mind is one that can feel everything.
Joy. Grief. Wonder. Disappointment. Love. Loneliness. Awe. Fear. Hope. Regret.
All of it.
Because all of it belongs.”
I love this for a couple of reasons. The first is that this is attainable. If we are honest, we’d all admit that we can’t be happy all the time. The second is that it leaves open the question of balance. As we meander through life, we go through moments where any one of these feelings dominates. That changes with time
But, the more I think about this, the more I realised that I was fixating on the list of named feelings. I’d skipped the most important word in Alicia’s description, ’everything’. A healthy mind is one that has the freedom to feel new things, including ones that we can’t put a name to.
Alicia goes on to describe the effort we put in to avoiding or escaping certain feelings. I find it interesting that when I ask people why they use Instagram, TikTok, or consume other platforms with an algorithmic feed, the answer is avoidance. Our unquenchable thirst to consume new content isn’t because it makes us happy, it is an attempt to devoid ourselves of the space to feel things that we find difficult. This can’t be healthy.
Alicia’s original post is here: I don’t wish you happiness