A couple years ago I had a bout of insomnia. I finally got up at some ridiculous hour and turned on the tv hoping to reset my brain and go back to sleep. I browsed through Netflix and landed on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee where Jerry Seinfeld takes famous comedic actors to coffee, in exotic cars, which turned out to be quite an interesting series.
One of the first ones I watched was with Jim Carrey.
Most of the episode was Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey, but he said something rather profound and one point that has stuck with me. Paraphrased it was:
“Death, will be a relief.”
Back in December 2023 my wife and I were involved in a car accident. We were uninjured, our car had very light damage and we were able to drive away, but the cars behind us all needed to be towed away.
I had been dealing with a great deal of stress for many months at that point, but since then I have been STRESSED!! Something about that accident pushed me over a tipping point I didn’t realized I had reached. Dealing with that stress over the months since made me realize: Jim Carrey is absolutely right.
There is so much tension in the world with COVID, war, inflation, and politics, to name just a few things. Collectively the vast majority of humanity is under relentless and unprecedented pressure. The news bombards us with “everything is terrible” and social media tells us over and over that “you aren’t good enough”. We are buried under the weight of so much negativity and so many expectations that I fell like there is a lot of truth in what Jim Carrey said.
Unless something dramatic happens culturally and economically, the only point in our life when we can expect relief from the unrelenting stresse of life is when our life ends.
Now it is SUPER important to CLEARLY state that I am *not* going to go out and end my life, or that I think *anyone* should, but I think it needs to be said that we are ALL feeling it.
You are not alone!! And I think we need to do our best to keep that in mind.
I mention in a previous blog that we are all in the same storm, but we are NOT all in the same boat. Some of us are in big boats and are handling it better than those in small boats, or those who are swimming and just barely keeping their head above water.
We are not all in a position to make the lives of others easier, or better, but we should ALL be making an effort to not make the lives of others more difficult. We need to remember that even those of us who appear to be happy and cheerful may be hiding their pain behind a mask. Few of us are in a position to truly know what others are going through at any point.
We should also remember that we cannot dictate where the limits of others are. If someone says they are stressed, or burned out, we cannot tell them they are wrong. Again: we can never truly know what another person is dealing with, and if they tell us they’re “done”, then we need to believe they are.
During these exceedingly stressful times, if you, or anyone you know is struggling with their mental health, or considering suicide. Please get help!
In Canada, contact the below numbers!
(Not sure why one of them is sponsored by Ontario Pork, but help is help!)
Mind Flush - My S.H.E.T.T. Blog 