Indelibly stamped

Nothing is terrible. This was the text he read the other day on a magazine photograph, stamped on the front of the T-shirt of a young psychologist. He liked the sentence. He also asked himself if everything is so, not terrible. If that were the case, that was all his atheistic self needed, a concise, naive, petty, sharp instruction he could follow in order to alleviate the daily strains of life. A case of do or die. A learning approach against adversity. An attitude. A strong belief. A faith, a dogma. The message is of course flawed, for obvious reasons. Yet it can loosely do the trick if used as a defense mechanism, forcing yourself to accept it as an axiom - as an ansatz. Everyone does that, to some extent, everyone needs a shield against the unexpected, however little effectual that shield may be. The strategy is simple: you have to believe in the inner meaning of the message, you have to truly (and childishly) interiorise the meaning of those words, so you can resort to them as soon as you're confronted with one of the one million terrible things living brings forth. Use it as a reflex action and it may then just sort of work. Just then, somewhat, may it provide some varying degrees of relief, lukewarm, bittersweet, halfhearted relief. The young, smiling psychologist had the text stamped on his T-shirt. You'd better have it indelibly stamped on your mind, reactions, and circumstances, if you ever hope to see it work.