STABILISE

Disclaimer: It is important to note that STABILISE is a work in progress operated by an educated woman with lived experience with bipolar disorder and computer scientists interested in improving access to practical knowledge, medical professionals, and crisis responders. We are building a mobile application that is designed to track moods and analyse text so help can be provided sooner. For medical advice, please consult your family doctor or a trusted health care practitioner. If you believe you are in need of immediate medical assistance and live in North America, call 911. Otherwise, please reach out to the Lifeline at 988 (by phone or text).

Tag: Writing

  • On Being a Woman in the World

    Audre Lorde, a Black, lesbian, mother, activist, and poet, is reported to have said,

    “Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had… And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

    When I am feeling as though my tongue has been cut out, I return to Audre because I think it is difficult to be a woman in the world. There is a perpetual sense of danger. I used to think it was my imagination but there is strong evidence for this.

    The hardest part of being a woman is the consistent sense that I am an imposter. I cannot remember when this began. Perhaps it has existed my entire life so there is no clear delineation. I am not alone in this feeling. I need to reassure myself of that fact. A friend once told me that she struggles with Imposter Syndrome as well. This internal doubt is compounded by the constant reminders of how unsafe the world can be for women.

    Often enough, I feel the need to double or triple check the facts. I doubt the veracity of my opinions. Sometimes it takes a fourth or fifth look before I trust that what I say is true.

    This doubt doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it lives alongside the reality that the safety of women is constantly under threat. The other day, I watched a documentary series where a woman, Samantha Josephson, thought that she was getting into the Uber she ordered. She was abducted and murdered by the male driver who had been circling around, observing her and noticing that she was waiting for a ride. Her parents began the “What’s My Name?” campaign that urges riders to verify the license plate and ask drivers “What’s my name?” before entering a vehicle.

    Throughout my life, I have heard countless stories about women who are abused. I am thinking about the missing and murdered Indigenous women, Malala Yousafzai, and Katie Piper. I am thinking about them and how Audre asked, “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” She advanced the notion that it is necessary for us to speak, to tell our truths, to declare that we exist. She said that “our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.”

  • On Love

    In his book, The Symposium, Plato writes,

    “… each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.”

    The Symposium is fundamentally a book about love, a series of speeches designed to encourage thought about what love means. The quote is from Aristophanes.

    I remember reading The Symposium for the first time during my undergrad. I was astounded by the variety of perspectives on love. I was particularly struck by Aristophanes and Socrates.

    In the book, Socrates advances the notion that love draws us closer to the divine. When we love one, we are encouraged to love the whole of humanity, which leads us to the divine circuit of virtues.

    He argues that when we love a single individual, we must admit that those qualities are not particular to that individual. Once conceded, we expand our perspective to include others, eventually ending up loving the virtues themselves. There is something gorgeous about his theories, if only because they encourage the reader to think deeply.

    The reason why I like Aristophanes take is because he emphasizes the impact of the search. Often enough, I feel as though I am searching for something. I no longer believe it is a person.

    Being a believer in God is difficult. It is not the act of believing that is difficult, but rather, the consistent worry that I will deviate from what is moral. To be moral is to live a good life, an Aristotelian idea. Well, it is a feature shared by the ancients. They were preoccupied with the question, What does it mean to live well?

    When I think about what it is I am searching for, I would say it is a profound sense of peace. I mean, the peace I saw when I was looking at my mother who passed away.

    At her funeral, I leaned over to my uncle and said, “She looks like she knows something we don’t.”

    I’ve never forgotten that. Two years and I still feel her breathing beside me.

    Maybe the love we search for, the missing half, are really our parents, our friends, the person we saw on the street once.

  • On the Midnight Hour

    In Part 1 of his book Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard writes:

    “Don’t you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask?
    Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with?
    Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?
    Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself.
    I have seen men who played hide-and-seek so long that at last in the end they could not find themselves.”

    Kierkegaard’s words are striking because they encourage us to wonder: what does he mean by “the midnight hour?” When I read it, I think of the darkest part of night, a time in which one is typically left alone with one’s thoughts. One can approach the self head-on or avoid through distraction.

    Today, social media has become a common distraction. The endless scroll can keep us from being alone with our thoughts and, at times, from engaging with life more directly — with nature, with loved ones, with ourselves. Social media did not exist in Kierkegaard’s time, but the point is that distractions come in many forms.

    Perhaps the greatest tool against living in a distracted way is meditation. It encourages detachment from objects in the world and cultivates a free mind, a space where thoughts drift like clouds rather than being gripped. However, there is a part of me that believes meditation can itself become a distraction, likely reflecting my own restlessness with silence. The crux is that thoughts themselves are not the problem, but what one is thinking about.

    When I read Kierkegaard’s passage, I notice how he refers to deception and playing hide-and-seek. In order to deceive oneself, there must be truths being avoided. I think of how people remain in jobs they dislike, mediocre relationships, superficial friendships, or otherwise engage with life in an inauthentic way. By asking about the midnight hour, Kierkegaard suggests there will come a time when we are called to be who we truly are, without the stories we tell ourselves or others.

    When the midnight hour arrives, it is likely be painful. Similar to meditation, which emphasizes a clear mind, Kierkegaard calls for a mind that is purposefully aware. Meditation can help us cultivate this awareness, strengthening our capacity to notice and reflect on our thoughts, and ultimately acknowledge their impact on our lives.

    There remains a component that is difficult to articulate: our characters are shaped by our actions. Over time, actions can make our characters feel set in stone. What Kierkegaard may be urging is recognition of our capacity for change. Just as past actions shaped who we are, we retain the ability to choose new actions, thereby altering the course of our lives.

    In the end, the line that affects me most is: “Or are you not terrified by it?” In one line, Kierkegaard affirms the fleeting and fragile nature of life. He is asking us: if not now, when will we truly choose ourselves?

  • The Introduction

    Welcome to Stabilise.

    Stabilise is a human-led virtual project designed to emphasize the importance of meaning-making. It is about sharing different philosophical and psychological ideas with the hope of emphasizing how theoretical frameworks can provide clarity for emotional experiences.

    In our time together, I intend to write about what it means to be a human being in the world. I will write about nostalgia, how a single whiff of perfume can inspire a memory or a series of memories. I will discuss Emmanuel Levinas and his concept of the face-to-face encounter. I will explore intense topics, like death and how it feels to lose a parent. When doing all of these things, I will attempt to navigate through them with a philosophical lens.

    Ultimately, it is my goal to illustrate how philosophy and writing about ideas and emotions can strengthen one’s constitution long enough to stabilise.