healing starts with the wound: facing a future that may never come.

Many things become clear in the shift from youth to adulthood. One of them is the adults that we’ve trusted, and who promised us that we could achieve the American Dream, have left a mess for all to inherit.

In my attempt to learn more, I’ve poisoned myself on a steady stream of content that’s turned me sour on the world.

This wave of content confirmed everything I’ve tried to get out of my head, and has kneed me to a stance I haven’t found myself in for a long time. One drenched in anger. This feeling that the world that I have been sold was delivered, unwrapped, only to realize that the contents are barren.

It feels like being on an entire cruise boat full of people overloaded with consumption (that you caught the last day of), who leave you to settle the bill.

More than anything else in my life, I’ve been a person who loves to learn, who loves to take those back to my work to fix things. And as I look from my internet cave to our future, it feels unfixable.

From 15–18, I did a lot of mental health activism and advocacy. I worked incredibly hard to build projects and to do things that helped others. I burned myself to the bone trying to fulfill this goal that people handed me and other prominent youth activists. One thing I was told was that “The kids are the future. The kids are going to fix us. The kids will figure this out. The kids are the answer”.

Adults would throw that phase around without truly realizing the pressure it enabled. With the rise of Neoliberalism in the US, there was an increasing pressure on the average citizen to enact individual change.

It was born into us that systemic issues were actually the result of the individual person. You’re poor because you choose a bad degree. Your kids go to a bad school because you’re poor. You’re in the circumstances you’re in because this is what you deserve for the choices you’ve made.

Humans have this collective bug called the “Just World” fallacy, which has evolved to embed itself in some religions and beliefs. The idea is that there is a specific code, a set of guidelines to follow, and if you don’t follow them, then you are punished. Over time, we began to associate this punishment with the person itself having done something to deserve it.

Rape victims asked for it because they provocatively dressed. People who went into any other field than finance / business / STEM deserve poverty because they didn’t grind hard enough. Homeless people don’t deserve housing or care because they’re all drug addicts.

These statements all share one thing. They focus on the person’s individual accountability and shift the blame towards them as opposed to the perpetrators: whether society, other oppressors, systemic failings, or more.

When I grew up, I identified with that mindset. But that neoliberal mindset of “if things fail it’s my fault” coupled with the pressure of adults who you believed were supposed to save the world -

Well, that mindset broke me.

I’m sitting here, looking at the massive bill to be paid, having worked my entire career to build up the money to cover it, and realizing it’s not enough.

That reality is crushing. When I started Astra Labs, I kept on focusing on this one idea. I took my pain, and everything I went though, and I focused it on building a different future so that no one else would have to go through it.

That was, and still is the foundational idea of Astra. That pain and trauma is a form of energy that shifts into helping others, to break free from the cycle of generational and interpersonal trauma.

But when you look at our future on the horizon, how much effort it’s going to take, and how much I’ve already put in, it’s impossible to not feel like all the pain I’ve put in was for nothing.

It’s impossible to not feel like that idea is immature, that I’ve failed as a leader, and more than anything, the future that I’ve inherited is my own fault.

This perversive sense that everything will come crumbling down and that I can do nothing but watch it is crippling. The grief of watching a future slip away that hasn’t even happened yet is a form of grief unlike any other.

The solace of my youth and of my now are two quotes from Viktor E. Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search For Meaning”.

1. “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

2. “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Someone gave me the wisest advice I’d ever received: “Love is not a feeling, but a choice. It’s one that you have to wake up and say yes to every day for the duration of it, especially on the bad days”.

When I look at the path charted, it’s only when I stare down the ways it could end me before I finish it that I know if I’m truly committed.

I asked myself, ‘If it looks like I’m going to lose, do I still want to try?’

If you are only willing to play in specific conditions, do you really want to play the game, or do you just want to win?

As I started writing this, I had a two-day long panic attack from dread and fear. I walked away from this article half way through writing, knowing the ending, but being unable to feel as if I believed it myself. That night, I reached out to friends to listen to my fears and to comfort me.

They responded. Within less than an hour, a sizable chunk of my friends got in a video call with me. We all ate ice cream and watched horrible YouTube videos.

That’s how I’ll get through this unknown future. By the side of people I love.

This strain of fear instills a sense of powerlessness, that this tangible action will be suffocated under the shadow of numerous crises.

That might be true.

The future might be so awful that there’s no precedent for it. It might destroy everyone. It might be the worst period of human history.

The future might be so great that I will never have to be anxious another day in my life. I may be spiraling into doom for nothing.

Either way, what you love is your fate. I look at the people I love, and I know my fate is sealed.

As I sit with my friends, I don’t care if the future is terrifying. I only care if it hurts the people I love, and if I can be there to hold their hand through it.

What I can do, and what I will do irregardless, is work to build a better future for them. And if I can’t do that, then I’ll spend the time I have with them grateful for every bit of love and care I receive from them.

The world seems easier to save when you reduce the scope to your own slice of it:

Mine are

• my neighbors who leave free produce outside of their house to make healthy eating more accessible.
• My friends who happily indulge in my whims of making them watch Kitchen Nightmares.
• My mentor who I get coffee with every Thursday.
• My mail man who tries to pet my cat through the window every time he brings me mail.

And every other person I come across that reminds me of the foundation of Astra. In them, I see the traits that make the fight worth it, even if it ends up futile.

The warmth, the sense of care, the compassion, and the potential they bring in their wake — that’s worth losing everything for. With them in the world, there’s hope.

These are the people I love. They’re my world. In their warmth, the other world becomes secondary.

To me, love is not an emotion. It’s not a gift, or a date. Love is a choice to remain in a commitment. One that’s fundamentally binding, that requires choice even in the face of easier paths.

To show my love to those who love me, is to continue committing to this path for them. Even if the path might be the only one I walk down.

In the past, today, and in all my tomorrows, whatever pain I face will morph because of their presence, and the commitment that stems from it.

It won’t be my pain alone, but an experience that I can build on to provide hope for the people that have given me mine.

Pain is simple. It tells us where it hurts so we can fix it.

Ad Astra Per Aspera (Astra Labs’ namesake) translates to ‘to the stars through hardship’. In that vein, my path has always cycled to healing through the wounds. Any version of the future will be no exception, and any way to improve it involves going directly into the darkest part of it.

My guiding star is a vision of the future that may never come. Our coming reality is a hidden landscape with no precedent that I’m crossing in parallel with everyone else.

I’ll march forward with that vision, proceeding into the landscape one day at a time. I’m prepared to never reach that star. But knowing it exists, and carrying a commitment to it for those I love, is more than enough reason to go.