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✨ Hi! Welcome to my writing space and thank you for being here.
I'm Eshaal, an 18-year-old based in NYC who's especially interested in medicine, society vs. self, and communications/interdisciplinary work. This is primarily where my ideas lie. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well, so feel free to message me using the form on the home page or my linked socials!
📄 Table of Contents
🎸 Song of the Month
Summer of Stoicism (It's Not What You Think)
At some point on my commute back from work/school, there's this gigantic incline. It doesn't really make sense.
Like, why? You mindlessly walk , and then BAM: involuntary cardio. It's that little extra inconvenience right before reaching the station that feels extra pointed. Like the urban planners are laughing at you. I hated that incline so very much. I'd even take 8-minute detours to avoid it entirely if I was extra salty.
TL;DR: A piece of the ground being at an angle was stressing me out. LOL.
Of course, it sounds silly when I put it that way. But after having worked on my classification of the things I can control and the things I cannot, instances as simple as this bump on the way home from school don't bring me nearly as much stress as they once did. Later on, I found out that this is a primary principle of stoicism, the revolution to my happiness and the focal point of my summer. So I’m going to step away from this painfully first-world problem for a second to explain more.
On control: we lack it. We have collectively unlocked lots of power, don't get me wrong: A/C makes us forget horrendous weather, a Tylenol can make your pain manageable, and the Internet gives us more connection to causes we care about than ever before. Yet no matter how much modern convenience sets up our sense of security, the truth is, we are small pieces of very large interconnected systems. If there's a blip in the community, the global supply chain, or even the cosmos (heat flares, anybody?), there is not one person who could heal that all by themselves.
If you’re a Gen Z-er, you know this especially well. It’s not just mild inconveniences. It’s the depressing news every day, complicated social relationships (raise your hand if you’ve felt the loneliness epidemic hit you…), and all on top of uncontrollable personal events. Without going into detail. it is clear in hindsight that the little incline wasn’t the source f my stress, but rather more soul-crushing news coming out of my personal life that was on constant replay in the back of my head.
If this sounds pessimistic to you, then you're definitely not alone. As environmental studies teacher Sarah Jacquette Ray tells Psychology Today, "Some students become so overwhelmed with despair and grief that they shut down.…Their sense of powerlessness, whether real or imagined, is at the root of their despair."
But what if I told you that you don't have to ascribe powerlessness to despair?
I'd argue that emotional and mental strength comes from the ability to reconcile nuanced and often conflicting ideas (e.g., "this person is very valuable to my life" and "this person is no longer a part of my life") healthily. It admittedly sounds passive at first to not try and meddle with things you cannot change. However, this is not the same as not doing anything about a problem. Instead, the answer (for me, at least) lies in using what you can control, like your own reactions, to make the uncontrollable work well for you.
Reconcile“I am powerless here” with “I don’t need to have to power this entire situation in order to feel okay.”
Because when we are paralyzed by the fear of not being in control, we are also unable to harness the things we can. Worse, we try to force things to be in control, thereby straining relationships and a natural balance, and without growing from the experience of facing inevitability.
Ergo, this mindset dictates that while you should try to change your life (and the world through your life passions) for the better, it is crucial to separate what is in your hands and what isn't. The world will never be catered to you. The rain will fall even if you wish it were sunny.
Sound a bit harsh? Yeah, it did to me too... until I tried out this internal compartmentalization and immediately began living a more fulfilling life. Ironically, it made me even more effective at achieving my goals, because I was able to come up with workable solutions without being bogged down by the weight of unchangeable truths or other people's decisions. I just cannot change them, so why spend so much aimlessly trying, when I could be doing something much more actionable
Things will always happen. The real question: what can you do in response? Will your reaction be valuable to you?
Apparently, this aligns with stoicism.
And I do acknowledge a fundamental criticism that even I hold on this: the idea that all emotion is useless and being unable to control it is weak. Not only is this incorrect, but it is a privileged thing to say. You cannot simply think yourself out of a traumatizing situation, nor can you become some creature devoid of empathy and initial reactions. In fact, this mindset ONLY works for me when I allow myself time to feel what I need to feel before analyzing or compartmentalizing.
My point is that consistently becoming stressed by an uncontrollable happening will do you more harm than good in the long-run, and it is worth investing into minimizing that stress so you can divert the energy to more fulfilling things. For me, this meant I tried to see more opportunities even in roadblocks (literally if we think about that opening story), and the fulfillment from that only made me see things more optimistically.
Yet another thing I find interesting about this philosophy is how much it lines up with advice psychologists/therapists/etc. provide when it comes to anxiety management. Heck, even Pixar made a direct message in its latest extravaganza "Inside Out 2": after having spent some time with Anxiety, Joy learns that the best way to keep her grounded is to remind her what she can control (studying for a class) rather than what she can't (whether she'll be selected for an exclusive team). This type of mindset has helped me maximize my own joy, my time, and my work.
Not to mention that it's probably saved me a lot of the physical neural and immune degeneration that comes with stress (yes, that is a thing!).
So... back to the incline. It wasn't until after one day after going to the gym and being pumped, with the birds chirping and the nicest weather of the month in full spring, that I skipped up that entire thing. Yep. Skipped. Like a Disney cartoon. And I enjoyed the extra cardio for once, along with the interesting view of the grass and the trees along the way. Even if it's rainy, or if I haven't been in the mood to work out, that's the exact same incline I dreaded every day.
The next day as I headed for the incline, I thought, what's making it any different now than before?
Well... my own reaction. Was I going to be inconvenienced by the same thing every day forever? Or was I going to find ways around it?
Now, I'm kind of grateful for that awkwardly positioned uphill battle. I can't flatten the hill. But I can appreciate the greenery around it and the extra exercise it gives me. On days where more serious things have happened, it is nice to divert my focus to them, rather than becoming overwhelmed by little distractions like this.
Actually, just today, I saw a spotted cat jump across the incline. She evidently lives here. I'm glad to have finally noticed her.
✨ What I've Been Up To
Phew! Long introductory thoughts. I’ve got some updates from the most rejuvenating summer of my life and the first month of… gasp… college!
That should… cover it? Honestly, I’ve been pretty hungry to learn and stay on top of things lately. If you have any reading recs or comments or similar experiences, please let me know! I’ll update you again next month!
✒️ Bringing Back Ye Olde Writing Days
Fun fact about American college: there are academic programs all across the country for all sorts of different niches and personalities.
Less fun fact about American college: this means that upon high school graduation, someone who's lived beside you for a decade might just be moving to the other side of the country (or the world?! If that one friend is reading this, hello).
A greater issue for me during this period of social change was that I do not enjoy sustaining friendships entirely in social media DMs. Even after cutting out social media, I've had to log on for a little bit every day (on the Instagram website, strangely) to catch up on private messages. It was a struggle that came with my decision to go offline more often, and one that became more glaring as I realized this was going to be how I communicated with people I wanted to keep from my school years.
Which is why I decided to try making a penpal group with some fellow graduating friends.
I know, I know, penpals should probably be people who have not met in person. Yet this was actually a really fun way to get my friends into writing letters (thankfully, they were on board with the idea, from the STEM majors looking for a humanities outlet to a literal published author in the circle - you can buy his book here). While things fizzled out as people started moving into their dorms, we've all agreed that physically writing to others is a wholly different experience from texting, and an option that some want to continue in the future with other people.
It makes a whole lot of sense, both from a scientific and personal standpoint.
On a scientific (and even design-based level), handwriting evokes more intimacy between the sender and the receiver. You treaure a letter more because it's not going to scroll off into the abyss. You look at someone's ink on paper and fell a greater sense of connection than the.... what is it, Arial? Calibri? Okay, I looked it up and apparently it's SF Pro or Roboto.... font that text messages suck you into.
On a personal level, writing letters is the exact opposite of fast. It requires some physical effort and the personal experience of putting your pen to a sheet of paper, which is more than what most apps require you to do. Actually, when I asked one friend if they'd be open to me sending them letters occasionally, they responded with, "Texting is a lot more efficient." Which some might appreciate in their day-to-day lives, but... what value do we get from friendships that are just based on efficiency and convenience? I'd argue that you learn and grow much more from not only sharing your own thoughts in a slow manner with higher stakes (can't unsend, can't edit after sending, and you pay a few cents for the stamp), but from reading the thoughts of someone else in their own bare handwriting. I recently read about a woman who learned more about her grandmother in a few snail mail sessions than she did via visits and phone calls in years... and I totally believe it.
There's also the alternative of electronic penpalling, where you can physically write on an iPad via some notes or art program, and then send over the PDF. It's still your handwriting but with a modern twist. I still prefer the physicality of using up my wild pen collection, but this has worked tremendously for busier people wanting to maintain that special touch of letter-sending.
When was the last time you just wrote for yourself? Just you and a blank sheet of paper, no prompt, just your thoughts and your desire to put them down? Try it. You might learn something new about yourself, not just your grandmother.
Which reminds me to mail out some envelopes to some friends. Adios!
Some Thank Yous
You ever meet someone with an interest you’ve never known much about, and then after they tell you about it, you start seeing that interest everywhere? Suddenly, the streets you thought you knew through and through show you merch of their favorite show or examples of the signage they know a strange amount about.
This has happened to me so much since starting college. Even with the majority of people here being from New York, they teach me so much every day without even realizing it. It’s opened me up to further understand both what I do know and what I do not. And then there are the little moments :) so here are some words of appreciation!
Thank you to…
I will never truly know how many people contributed to making my day possible because we are so crazily interconnected now. But I wish to extend my gratitude to all of them as well… and I hope to meet many more.
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