Somewhere between headlines and hashtags.

A few days into another year of sensory overload, and it already feels like we’ve lived a decade. In the span of a single week, we collectively watched an innocent woman get shot in the face by ICE. Then we flipped over to Marcello Hernandez’s Netflix special — laughing at the familiar rhythms of growing up in an immigrant family — while our brains quietly whispered, “Are we about to tumble into World War III?” And of course, we welcomed a brand-new food pyramid designed to combat the “war on protein."

All of this layered between our attempts to act like composed, well-adjusted adults in the opening days of January. We cling to resolutions, sit in fishbowl boardrooms discussing KPIs as if they’re ancient runes we’re deciphering, scroll past strangers on Instagram claiming they’ve already “locked in” for 2026, and consider — once again — another weight loss remedy someone on the internet swears changed their life. Thankfully the algorithm tosses in the occasional dog photo or inspirational quote to keep us from walking into traffic.

I ground myself with yoga classes and nature walks, anything that brings me back to the quiet middle — away from the extremes the world seems addicted to. We’ve become so polarized that being human now feels like treading water in the grey. Somewhere between headlines and hashtags, the real stories unfold: the off-duty cop stepping into a convenience store where the immigrant cashier — who has no idea this customer voted for their sister’s deportation — greets them with an easy smile and compliments their outfit. That same cop could, in another moment, save their life during a robbery.

​Nothing is clean. Everything is layered. And the labels we cling to rarely tell the truth.
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We’re trained to scan for the bad, to hunt for the next thing that confirms our despair. But where is the good? When do we stop consuming ourselves from the inside out, letting the machine pit us against one another like we’re all contestants in some cosmic, cruel reality show? It’ll never be okay to vote against basic human rights. It’ll never make sense that money took precedence over nature. Somewhere along the way, we veered off course.

And yet — I still believe most of us have good at our core. If we peel back the layers, unwrap all the paper-mâché made from propaganda and fear and inherited beliefs we never asked for, we are soft underneath. Tender, even. Human.

So maybe the question is: where are the moments when we all collectively tune out? When we stop performing? When we just… are?
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Because at the end of the day, we’re only human. And honestly — who decided it had to be this hard?