The world is drowning in anxiety.
Lately I keep hearing from people around me that they feel scared about the future. Like we're not really living — just surviving. Like we've somehow ended up serving our anxiety instead of our lives.
It feels like we've forgotten how to float. Not swim — just float. Instead we're all frantically splashing around, burning through every last bit of energy… and still going under.
A lot of people in my circle are immigrants. Like me. And we're all kind of… untethered. There's always something with documents, always a new language to wrestle with, always new neural pathways forming so fast my brain literally feels like it's cracking.
Should I buy a new mug? Such a small question. But for someone who once had 30 minutes to pack up their life and leave — it's not small at all. So many things I loved exist now only as memories.
People who moved at their own pace, on their own terms — they're lucky. But even they know that feeling of not quite having a home. Of always living in the question: so what's next?
And then there's work. Building something in a new country, in someone else's language, with an accent that people feel the need to point out. Constantly.
Money thoughts that never fully quiet down — you earn enough, technically, but it never really feels like enough.
What about tomorrow? What about tomorrow? What about tomorrow?
A whole generation thrown overboard, trying to remember how to swim. No life jackets. No idea where the shore is. And the more we thrash, the more the panic takes over.
But here's the thing — you don't drown when you're calm. A relaxed body floats. Physics just… handles it. You breathe, you stop fighting, and you stay up.
We've just forgotten that. I've forgotten that.
I forgot how to stop. I forgot how to breathe. I forgot how to catch a wave instead of fight it.
I don't know how else to explain what's been going on inside me. These are the only words I have for it.
You can't save yourself mid-panic. You can't see the way out when you're in the middle of drowning. But that's exactly what so many of us need right now.
We lost the ability to just… pause. We forgot how to let go.
Maybe that's why I haven't taken off my Princes rings lately.
They remind me that I know how to swim. That we all do — it's built into us. We were born with it.
We just need to get quiet. Breathe. And trust...
