Depression is “all in your head” the same way prostate cancer is “all in your ass". A phrase I unfortunately cannot take credit for, but which I think might just be THE best comeback to a tired & abused misconception on the topic of depression.

Arguably, though we have a long way to go in terms of objectively understanding consciousness and subjective experience, we might be in a better place than ever thanks to experimental drugs currently under clinical investigation. In the meantime, let's normalize conversations about mental health and treat depression with the same seriousness and empathy we extend to other physical illnesses. Your brain is an organ, and sometimes, it needs medical attention too.

everything is neutral until humans add their judgements and when we don't live in a shared reality we experience something I could only describe as "moral relativism"

our early years shapes our neural connections in ways over which we have no say, but it has downstream effects for the rest of our lives unless we practice self-reflection and awareness.

How tedious it is, the way we put others in buckets based on the trinkets they have collected in the wild. As phenotypic markers go, I don't understand what we were thinking as a collective.

Once, on our way to a family outing, I was watching the cars pass by in the opposite direction. For no apparent reason, it suddenly dawned on me that in each and every one of those cars sat a group of people just like us; all complex beings with histories as intricate and old as ours. Perhaps even, unbeknownst to us all, our stories were intertwined at some point in time - an interaction between ancestors without which we would never have ended up right here on this particular day, in our respective cars on a lazy Saturday. And there we were, just casually passing each other by as if none of that matters.