Opinion

So, you go to the gym three times a week, order that yummy kale salad and sleep eight hours a night; but what do you do to care for your mental health? I had a salad joke, but I tossed it. You know life expectancy would grow immeasurably if vegetables smelled as good as pizza.

Do people do things to you that defy the common-sense view of how others should behave around people they actually claim to care about? Would you not expect family or friends to show you compassion and even tenderness? You know what they say: Family – where life begins and the laundry never ends. Then again, nothing brings a family together quite like a Wi-Fi outage.

Why do you have friends? Is your friendship one of the high points of your existence? You know she’s your best friend if you don’t have to act socially acceptable around her.

Self-worth is essential to every aspect of your life. Your parents may have tried to foster healthy self-esteem as do you as a parent. You know you’re a parent when the majority of your diet is made up of the foods that your kid didn’t finish. And don’t you hate it when new parents ask who the baby looks like. It was born 15 minutes ago; it looks like a potato. Then again, I heard it said: I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.

I know: Failures can seem quite demoralizing and disheartening. But do you ever really learn from your mistakes? Sure, we all want to think of ourselves as competent, adept, and accomplished. A perceived mishap surely threatens our self-image. Are we not quite as skillful or savvy as we imagined?

Do you ever feel as though you gave up way too soon? You abandoned a project before it was complete. You feel like some things are simply way more challenging than you ever expected them to be. Well, you know what they say: The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.