Mental Health

Wisdom. The highly regarded philosopher Plato believed that Wisdom was one of four core virtues of the soul. To be wise is to wield information against ignorance through positive action. When times get tough, it is easy for us to reject all that we have come to know, seemingly willfully ignorant of any advice life has supplied. I’ll be the first to say that such a reaction is valid and fair regarding our mental health. It is a return to what we knew; a familiar setting where we might potentially hurt ourselves and others. Yet if we continue to do repeatedly, our support network may be strained. Perhaps this reads as harsh, implying “you better be able to listen to yourself at all times and snap out of it.” That is not the case at all. Wisdom builds up over time. What is suggested here, and...

The past week has not been easy; humans unhinged at the ends of barrels and fuse of warheads. Chaos is on the airwaves, straddling every knuckle of your hands with an involuntary authority that pulls your cheeks to a grimacing expression. The garden is on fire, the flowers have long gone away in the fields where oil etches slurred lines into the soil, and explosions eclipse the sunsetting sun, setting the horizon ablaze. In the clutches of survivalism, we are not allowed to possess a state of positive wellbeing that we deserve as living human beings. Taking in the world in mere seconds as news articles swirl and sentiments are shared can be overwhelming – the horror when history books flicker their pages in frantic song and come to life to write another chapter. For me, this shortcircuitin...

Why care? It sounds harsh, but it is valid to ask. Why ought we care about the wellbeing of others outside of ourselves? During the past couple of years, navigating and learning your world as it was in lockdown, there was little brain space to consider how a public health crisis impacted other age groups. That wasn’t selfish; it’s hyper self-awareness in a trying time to keep yourself healthy. To adapt to that phrase of a “new normal.” As the word pandemic begins to be replaced with endemic, we ought to look around to check in on our neighbors in a meaningful way. I’d like to focus on one group in particular: college youth. There is a mental health crisis among college students today in the United States. There is a crisis occurring within a body of over 19 million people in our nation. Fo...

Individual desire can be deadly. Longing can lash all of our roots. Today, let my writing be a subtle question. A musician might tell you of the following ambitions: they want to be the best in their genre, play X or Y music festival and be released on Z label, or be on A playlist. This musician, let’s say a DJ for the sake of letters on a keyboard, hasn’t played a prime slot at a club in his home city yet. Other people are playing all the good slots with the main promotion groups. This DJ feels that it’s a competition, and they must beat others to grow worthy of playing at a club. This DJ is in a state of judgment as often “becoming the best” invites. Judgment comes from Ego. Esteemed psychologist Carl Jung refers to the ego as the conscious mind itself – our emotions, moods, and thoughts...

Some say that singing to your flowers can help them grow. When I’m scared in the shadows, withering at the bottom of a valley of my own making, music has been the only thing that sparks a sense of confidence within me. Why? A cruel example of how music empowered people throughout periods of hardship lies within the history of slavery. Work songs grew during slavery when African Americans sought resilience and strength to endure injustice and cruelty. When interviewed by NPR about his novel “Work Songs,” Musician Ted Gioia said of work songs that: “[They] are more than a musical genre; they’re a transformational tool. It made the work less arduous; it made the hours roll by…It allowed them to have some sort of mastery over their work conditions which were often very demeaning ones.” Observi...

Bloom is a weekly column exploring mental health through the eyes of recording artist and mental health advocate, Alex Wagner. To me, well-being is like a garden. The seed was planted when I was young, seeing my mother outside gardening for hours on end. When I’d come outside onto the backdoor steps, she’d turn to me with a smile that touched the edges of her face. It was a joy that resonated within me like a ray of light through a Victorian pane window. She left this Earth a little under five years ago, but everyone that knew her understood that the garden was her place of solace. As my own story progressed past childhood and eventually into a period of madness, I would come to realize the salvation she discovered amongst the flora. “Bloom” is rooted in my own experience. So, that is wher...