I often wonder if the mental health epidemic in our country is actually a pathology of the brain, or if some of it is a response to the socio-economic construct society has built around us.
Were we created to sit in offices all day? Commute in cars? Sit at desks under harsh, fluorescent lighting, working to make this paper that continues to feel like it is never enough because the cost of everything keeps increasing?
Then take healthcare.
Our healthcare system is becoming increasingly less accessible and less affordable. I tried to contact my provider’s office today to request an earlier appointment, and the call doesn’t even go to the office itself anymore. It went to some centralized Hackensack-Meridian vortex to someone clearly in a different time zone…
How is it that with all of our advances in technology, connection somehow feels more disconnected then ever?
And it isn’t just healthcare.
It feels like every foundational aspect of society; healthcare, education, government, the economy, community, the environment, infrastructure, has been stretched beyond its ability to function the way it was intended to.
Like a rubber band pulled too far. Maybe it snaps. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it simply loses its elasticity, quietly shrivels, and becomes something different. Something no longer able to function the way it once did.
And yet, when we begin to feel anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, distracted, disconnected or depressed, we think something is wrong with us? Are we, in some ways, gaslighting ourselves?
Maybe nothing is “wrong.”
Maybe our brains are responding to the mass confusion and unsustainability of what we have collectively accepted as normal society.
I am not saying mental illness isn’t real. It is. Medication, therapy and psychiatric care can be lifesaving tools…
But I do wonder if we have become too quick to label every uncomfortable human response as internal pathology without also asking what is happening around the person experiencing it.
Maybe the pathology is not always entirely internal….
Go ahead and Google the happiest countries in the world. The United States ranks 23rd in the 2026 World Happiness Report. That alone should make us curious.
Have you ever heard of the village of Bakhta? It is a remote village in the Siberian taiga featured in the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. Life there does not seem easy. There is constant work, survival, brutal weather, animals, solitude and craftsmanship.
But while I was watching it, something stood out to me.
Everything has a rhythm.
The weather has a rhythm.
The work has a rhythm.
Survival has a rhythm….
People work with their hands. They prepare and repair. They move with the flow of the conditions around them. They use their human bodies and brains in ways our bodies and brains were built to be used.
And I can’t help but think…
We are out of rhythm.
We wake to alarms. Rush into cars. Sit in traffic. Sit under artificial lighting that makes me want to wear sunglasses indoors. Stare at screens…. Work in a hospital? You work 12 hr shifts with no proper lunch break and minimal support. Can’t even find a pillow or blanket for your ill patient despite working for a multimillion dollar healthcare system. Everyone around you is stretched just as thin, morale drops, patience disappears, and communication that should feel supportive inevitably has become toxic as baseline. Come home exhausted. Scroll some more. Worry about money. Worry about healthcare. Worry about the future…..
Then we lie awake wondering why our nervous systems won’t calm down. Maybe our brains are not failing us. Maybe they are responding.
Is our anxiety a signal? Is the exhaustion a signal?
Maybe we haven’t all suddenly become pathological.
Maybe we have simply become profoundly out of rhythm.
I don’t know…
Maybe we don’t need to fix every uncomfortable feeling within us. Maybe sometimes we just need to listen to what it is telling us about the world around us….
Because somewhere between the alarms, the traffic, the screens, the fluorescent lights, the constant striving and the constant worry, we may have forgotten something very basic:
We are human beings, not machines.
Maybe healing isn’t always about becoming better at tolerating the way we live. Maybe sometimes healing begins by finding our way back to a way of living that actually feels human.
Back to connection.
Back to nature….
Back to rhythm.
❤ KB
The S-BAR 