I’m writing this at a very awkward moment in my life.

On the one hand a great many things have tuned out better than one could have hoped. I have a stable job, where I got promoted quite recently. I do stuff that is quite interesting, and I learn.

At the same time, the last few weeks have been harrowing.

I have a lot of friends, people that would normally be well-off in deep trouble. While I stand by that AI will not affect one’s ability to feed themselves (at least not negatively), other “natural” intelligence do their best to do so. I have a brilliant Hungarian that is deeply depressed. I can act as if it’s easy to fix, but it is not. I barely manage to hide the symptoms most of the time, much less know of a cure.

The other friend’s problems are more direct. They are facing racism in isolation while grinding their teeth on the granite of science. I have no idea how hard it is for them specifically. I have not faced the kind and the magnitude of racism that they are going through. I am stuck giving them advice, knowing full well that these cliches don’t help, but not wanting to throw my hands up and say “It is beyond my control, I’m sorry, life sucks”.

Another one of my friends is facing an even greater problem. He escaped the clutches of one war, to be engulfed in another. He now lives in an alien place with great expenses and no help. While to an outside observer his achievement of having survived for four years might not seem impressive, having seen the toll that it takes, and having gone through the same thing in much milder conditions I can only take off my hat and bow down.

I had an article prepared for a group of friends that went viral, and did so at the worst possible time. I was simply not ready for it to be as broadly shared. While 95% of the feedback is both constructive and positive, the remaining 5% did me in. And it is not because that feedback was particularly hurtful; just because I fell back on habits that I thought were long gone, it reminded me of the struggles that I went through.

This post is not going to go viral. This post is for the people that make my day every day, and a piece of advice that I have re-discovered while trying to cope.

I made a lot of mistakes. I tried to make friends with everyone, instead of recognising that having more friends meant less quality time with them. The first major relief came when I nuked my Facebook. The second breakthrough was recognising that some things aren’t meant to last. And that it is OK that they did not last forever.

That last bit is what I think is probably the most valuable. One must have mysteries to have curiosity. One must have a struggle for their achievement to matter. One must be able to be wrong for their being right to matter. And the value of having good friends derives from the choice of spending your time with these specific people with their specific flaws. And one must be mortal to appreciate their life. Otherwise one might as well climb mount olympus and copulate with everything that moves spawning many a myth.

The most important thing I learned was that one must focus on the positives. One must appreciate the objective improvements. While, true, there is much negativity in the world right now, there is still hope.