If there was ever a time to think that life sucks, it’d be right now. Everything is terrible and it will never get better. We may as well just prepare ourselves to live this way forever, because things are never going to change and life as we knew it before is dead and gone. Just kidding! Jeez, lighten up. When I was little, I struggled with intrusive thoughts. This is incredibly common in children, especially in those questioning the world around them and trying to expand their knowledge. My thoughts were always simple and silly, like “what if you opened the salt shaker and emptied the contents onto this plate of spaghetti?” or “how fast can you click this pen open and closed?”
My dad called that the “monkey brain.” In the least scientific way possible, he explained that our ancestors were monkeys who didn’t know how to focus, and we still had a little bit of their thoughts. The monkey brain saw things through narrow windows and asked silly questions. We could not follow the monkey brain, because it was impulsive and didn’t think things through. The best example of monkey brain I can think of in recent culture is to “eat the tide pod.” (Disclaimer: don’t eat the tide pod.) What I didn’t realize is that monkey brain thoughts can be dangerous in other ways than just encouraging you to eat poison. A common teenager monkey brain thought: “If I fail this test, my GPA will go down and then I won’t go to college and then no one will want to date me and I won’t make any money and then I’ll die alone under a bridge and no one will care.” If you haven’t felt this way before, you’re lying. But what does this have to do with 2020 and the fact that the world sucks?
Right now, if you’re like me, your “monkey brain” wants you to be upset. The fun party-every-night college experience that we knew is over. We’re losing our young lives to COVID-19. Life will never be the same as it was. I’m never going to hang out with my friends without a mask on, ever again. It’s okay that you feel those things — I have felt them too. But it is important that you give your monkey brain a quick mental sucker punch to the mouth, because listening to that little dude is only bringing you down and making your life just that much more unbearable. It’s hard to remember that sometimes pessimism feels like realism when everyone only talks about the bad things. You will probably hang out with your friends without a mask one day… but also, what’s wrong with the mask? They make me feel mysterious.
The monkey brain will never be satisfied. Instead, you have to stop listening to your unhappy, intrusive thoughts and start listening to the good things, because no matter who you are or how you feel, they exist. You are not your monkey brain – you’re a human who can think better than a monkey can. I promise.
I’m not saying to be happy with the world that exists. This place kinda sucks right now. Oppression is rampant worldwide, unemployment is worse than it has been in recent human history, we are in the midst of a literal pandemic, and the people who are in charge don’t seem to care because they can make a profit on it. Those aren’t monkey brain thoughts – that’s real life right there, and it sucks. I want to change those things about the world, just like everyone else in this amazing generation of doers.
I woke up this morning with all the limbs I went to sleep with, and my roommate thinks I’m cool. Recently we’ve made some tasty food together while listening to music, and the water in my shower is always hot. The weather is so beautiful and it seems only to get nicer every day. This was the summer that my father’s monkey brain lesson finally kicked in. It turns out, all those nice thoughts were already there. I’d been looking for the bad thoughts — if I had only stopped, I would have found that the happiness was there all along.
So stop feeling like you need to listen to that little dude in your head. Stop feeling like if you’re happy, you’re compromising your ideals or pacifying yourself. Your personal happiness is achievable regardless of the state of the world and your part in it. Acknowledge your monkey brain, because that’s not something that will go away, but then choose to look on the bright side. And remember that being a happy person is not selfish – it is a service to those around you.
Whether or not happiness is infectious is regardless; sometimes it feels like pessimism is more contagious than the Coronavirus these days. Other people will force the monkey brain down your throat, and it will be hard not to turn around and shove those bad thoughts into someone else’s head. But if you are strong enough, resist that temptation and create a better world in doing so. Think about how the sun feels against your skin, or about how cute that person is in your afternoon class on Tuesdays and Fridays — and sucker punch your monkey brain.