There’s a lot wrong with the world we live in… but don’t give in to despair

On the first day of the year, I awoke depressed and with a cracking headache, but this was no hardwon hangover – the previous evening I’d gone to bed at 11 with a mug of mint tea, intent on starting the new year fresh.

Then I checked Instagram. Idiot.

So the last thing I saw in 2024 was a big giraffe kicking a baby giraffe to death, which was exactly what I never wanted to see. Thanks algorithm, you utter bastard.

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This was the final thing in a list of other horrible things I never wanted to see but nonetheless saw in 2024, including:

• the inside of a witness box during a rape trial;
• the further fraying of relations with a family member;
• a French pensioner drugged and raped repeatedly by her own husband and 50 other random everymen, by his invitation;
• some 2 200 migrants lost to the Mediterranean Sea;
• rampant climate destruction, the biggest issue we as humanity face, but also the most ignored in every election held last year. This is how we all die – or the poorest, most blameless do anyway;
• the world swinging hard-right and hard-hate;
• Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine (2024’s death toll topped 50 000 in Ukraine), and now the shipping of hapless North Koreans to the frontline;
• the Israeli massacre in Palestine. Yes, the 2023 terrorist incursion into the kibbutzim was appalling, but this is no justice. Instead, it’s blood-drunk annihilation, with over 44 000 Palestinians killed, alongside some 1 700 Israelis, and ensures the Middle East will not know peace for generations to come;
• continued brutality in numerous internal violent conflicts around the world, over 100 of them and counting. I see you, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia, Mexico…
• trolls, bots and info wars spreading disinformation on repeat, until even the most heinous nonsense has the shiny patina of fact. Truly, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on.

So you know what I did? I put my own boots on and took my dogs for a very long walk in the mountains.

There I breathed; I breathed deeply. The world remains a beautiful place, still.

Now here I am, chin up and ready to go again, if only because it beats giving in to despair.

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