As the world increases in complexity, as must I
Epistolaria, March 2026: On mending my self-made severance
This essay is included in the March issue of my epistolary zine, EPISTOLARIA. Project subscribers receive the zine, which includes this and a zine of selected essays. Paid Substack subscribers get access to the digitized version below. Please consider upgrading your Substack subscription to read the essay below in full or join the zine mailing list to support my work! Thank you for helping to make this creative practice a possibility. — Lian
In the 21st century, the average person is subjected to unprecedented immense chronic stress. Life has always been difficult, and survival is always hard fought, but the complexities of the age have introduced a multitude of considerations near-impossible to wholly comprehend. When once the focus was singular and linear — grow up in a fairly static community, have a family, work to sustain that family, retire in said community — now it is split a hundred ways.
The question of food, for instance, has been compounded with questions about the quality of said food, thanks to the double-edged sword of an abundant supply. Is the produce organic? Ultra-processed? Sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or cane sugar? Will this impair my child’s brain development?
When social media both nurtures community (video calls, live updates about time-sensitive events, accessible learning resources) and destroys it (deep polarization through misinformation and malicious propaganda), how should one participate in it?
These considerations take their toll. I am often exhausted by them myself. Of course, one could choose to distance themselves from it all and live as a recluse. A perfectly respectable decision, should they have no desire to be an active participant in the world. But what of us who want to live in its embrace? To make it better with our hands? To contribute, however much, in leaving for future generations a world worth living in?
