Good afternoon ~rusty, I don't understand this either.

Two puzzle pieces I believe to have identified:

• "stranger" on the internet --- the distance is just too big. I'm certain that a lot would not be voiced if standing in front of the other person in real life.

• "what I/you/we consider normal" seems to be a really narrow band. For example: It seems to be much simpler to diagnose a teenager with some fancy syndrome rather than stand the seemingly unbounded energy, the kind of multitasking (doing one thing and discussing another simultaneously), the fast hopping of items and ideas all within 5 minutes. I teach archery to interested folks, and teenagers are very interesting. They constantly test their and my limits. But yelling at them "don't do this and that" is often a bad idea. Practice alternative behaviour is more convincing imho.

There is more, like the feedback loop amplifying negativity, because it creates more online time. Good news are just too boring? But why then is a therapist asking for "one good thing worth mentioning today"? It seems to be much harder to see all the things that just work, that we take for granted but are not. Example: I am very grateful for the train/bus drivers every morning, because they started their shift such that I can commute to work. So I say "Good morning!" to the driver, when I enter the bus.

~bartender? It's so hot, I'd like to have a cold coffee with ice cream. A float of sorts, just not wth root beer if you can help it :-) Ah, and out in the garden, please. So I walk out the door. ~inquiry had a teaching job as well, didn't he? He was speaking about it, iirc. It's a lot of work to show others the world, and possible paths.

Which reminds me: We had a teenage girl at work place, just out of high school. She wanted to look into a technical job/study area. We showed her a lot of things. She was very humble about "not knowing" all this stuff. I told her, she will learn it if needed, no one knows this stuff without spending considerable time. Then she went to see the world. And I managed to convince her to really use this time /now/ and not fall into the trap, that she could come back later. :-) Good news.

Cheers to the curious youngsters traveling the planet to actually see for themselves, that things can be done differently.