Discussion
🧵 I live in a nature park in privileged Europe and the election in the USA gives me the creeps. I'm old enough to be able to compare: Globally, we are damn close to barbarism and the extinction of our life resources. But people are also good!
I'm curious: What methods do you have to endure the horror, to keep going, to stand up for the good, to not give up or go crazy? How do you keep #resilience + #courage for your #commitment? Let's collect tips against fatigue in dangerous times!
Read 2/2!
Also, spending quiet time in my garden, giving the squirrels and jays peanuts, or photographing bugs.
🧵 2/2 For all those who commented: You are fantastic! I am completely overwhelmed by your thread of sharing and helping each other that has been created here. I've never experienced it so intensely positive on social media.
I'm still reading (answering slowly), feeling less alone with the catastrophic times, and thinking: THIS is the world as I want it to be: people who care. Thank you, thank you so much!
Having a sense of wonder - life is amazing, self-awareness is baffling there is so much beauty, often just feet away from you.
Noticing and celebrating kindnesses. Sometimes just a smile or a hello.
Or the drunk in our local park who is a lovely human who picks up broken glass left there to keep dogs' feet safe.
How to create a counter-weight to the despair of current politics?
Playing chess with my daughters. Walks with my dog. Posting passages from Plutarch's Lives of Great Romans and Greeks here on Mastodon. Making my Lecture Notes for my students beautiful.
I've been thinking about your other point, where "making my lecture notes beautiful" is read as "making others happy".
I do want my students to enjoy my course, yes, but I don't really think of my teaching as a gift to the students. My (slightly pompous) aIm is to "keep the subject alive in my students". That then serves me as the counterweight against the general despair. I'd do it even if the students didn't like my course! 😄
I never quite saw this distinction before ,,, .
A while ago our Whippet was in hospital for a week. Boy how we missed him! He's our first dog, so I can only imagine how much it hits you when they go forever. Ever thought of another?
Thank you so much for these important tips! 
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Be silicon, not flypaper.
Choose a narrow front. Fight on that. Don't cast yourself as general.
Seek out joy. Take time to breathe.