Moving pictures can do strange things. Evoke memories. Stir old feelings. Videos recorded to VHS from the 90s and early 2000s have a vintage quality to them. Capturing the essence of moments, although clumsily. Filming conducted without the rapid feedback loops of today’s attention economy.
Before the long long month of UK January we just endured, I was back home for Christmas. I saw myself on old holiday footage. Captured never as the subject, but in and amongst my parents’ filming marketplaces, beaches, and a hotel we stayed at in Cuba.
The thing that hits me is my scrawny teenage body. All limbs and no torso, crowned with a baby face. I remember being embodied in that child-like young mans body and I hated it. Couldn’t stand that whatever I ate or didn’t eat, I couldn’t put on weight or muscle mass.
Realisations
Seeing myself on the camera like that made me feel a strange kind of emotion for my former self. Something like pity. I can’t claim to possess anything other than a standard, slightly out of shape, average physique these days. An almost post dadbod approaching middle age outfit. Bizarrely, I feel great about it. My physicality doesn’t give me any psychological misgivings. It’s functional, and has potential.
I wonder when I look at my growing children (7 and 4) what they will make of their physical selves over their formative years. I guess I shall try my best to equip them with the mental fortitude to overcome any physical misgivings they have about themselves.
In the long arc from self-rejection to acceptance, I have developed a three-point philosophy. At its heart are the central concepts of awareness, trust, and movement (in the metaphorical sense). Each of these is important in the fractious times we live in.
Strand One: Awareness
When I think about awareness, I no longer think about candles, breathwork, or meditation apps. I think about noticing the stories I’m constantly telling myself without realising I’m telling them at all.
This idea was formed for me after listening to a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, often referred to as This Is Water. His central point is simple. Most of what shapes our experience of the world happens automatically. We mostly move through life on default settings. We assume our interpretations are objective. This can mean we mistake our own habits for truth.
Awareness, in this sense, is the discipline of interrupting those defaults. Asking why did I react like that? Why does this headline make me angry? Why do I feel this way? It’s the recognition that what you aren’t seeing (your assumptions, biases, emotional reflexes) is often more influential than what you are.
In 2026, this matters more than ever. We are immersed in a media landscape designed to provoke. Algorithms reward outrage, fear, and tribal certainty. Emotional manipulation isn’t a side effect of the system anymore. It is the system. Hardly anything is fact checked and everything comes at you fast. In the words of Om Malik, velocity is the new authority.
Therefore, our unchecked cynicism starts to feel like intelligence. Detachment masquerades as wisdom. However, both are forms of mental laziness. Choosing to remain open, curious, and fair-minded in this environment is not naïve. It’s more of a challenge. It requires effort, humility, and often, self-correction.
Strand Two: Trust
For a long time, I have maintained that Every day is a good day. It sounds trivial at first, like something printed on a novelty mug. Let me clarify. This is not just straight forward optimism. It’s not pleasure-seeking, and it’s certainly not pretending things are ok when they are not.
Trust, as I understand it, is more like participation in the daily movements of everything that surrounds us. The society and culture we find ourselves in. It’s trust in the bare fact of being alive. In breathing. In waking up. In having another chance to engage with the world, however imperfectly.
This is gratitude as a default stance toward existence. This kind of trust doesn’t depend on outcomes. It doesn’t require things to go your way. Furthermore, it doesn’t collapse when plans fail or systems falter. Overall, this is a refusal to outsource meaning to circumstances.
I gained the idea from a Zen Buddhist saying. Yet I’m not talking in a mystical sense, but in a feeling of being grounded, and embedded. You focus on each day. You do what’s in front of you. You accept what you can’t control. Trust here doesn’t eliminate suffering. It gives suffering a context. Without it, awareness can turn into despair.
Strand Three: Movement
Awareness and trust can easily become comfortable places to hide…. it is possible to become more perceptive and maybe even serene while doing absolutely nothing. By movement, I don’t mean constant hustle or reckless action. I mean the willingness to act without complete certainty. To step forward while still afraid. To commit without perfect information. Apparently, the Bible mentions the phrase Do Not Be Afraid 365 times. I’m not a Christian myself but this is a repeated message I can get on board with.
I can liken it to the Robertson Clan motto “Glory is the reward of Valour”. This is another way of saying do the thing that scares you, or have no fear. So, valour in this sense, isn’t just bravado. It’s more like forward motion in spite of doubt.
It is common in life to be waiting for clarity that never arrives. We tell ourselves we’ll start when we feel ready. When the plan is perfect. When the timing is right. When the risk is lower. Often, this is fear manifesting through our psyche in more formal clothing. I’d say modern life encourages passivity. Endless content. Endless comparison. Endless rehearsal of futures we will never enter. That’s why the third strand is named movement. Movement cuts through all that.
It looks small at first. Sending the email. Publishing the draft. Making it to kickboxing. Choosing a direction and adjusting later. Taking sensible risks. The action compounds. Over enough time, frequently doing the thing that needs to be done shapes character. This is about as much free will as we have.
Taken together: Inner Coherence versus Outer Fracture
Overall, these three strands aren’t separate practices. They make up a system. Awareness keeps you from being hijacked (by outrage, despair, or inherited narratives you never agreed to). Trust keeps you from collapsing under the weight of what you see. Movement keeps you from spiraling into thought without consequence.
Taken together, the three strands form a kind of internal coherence. That coherence matters precisely because the external world feels increasingly fragmented. Institutions are wobbling. Norms are eroding. Certainties are decaying. The temptation is for us mere mortals to either panic or withdraw.
I contend that this three point philosophy points elsewhere. Not toward denial. Not toward domination. But toward steadiness. The world coming apart and your inner life coming together need not to be opposites. There’s a linkage here. When outer stability fades, inner orientation becomes a must-have.
What to do with all the wise words?
I don’t think this philosophy solves big problems. It doesn’t protect against loss. It doesn’t guarantee peace. It doesn’t make the future any more legible. What I’m saying is that uncertainty remains. The change is how you meet it. With you noticing more, trusting more, and acting without fear more. This is saying no to waiting for perfect conditions. Instead, you pay attention to your defaults, question your responses, and act on your orientation.
The current challenging era may not require certainty. But it does require steadiness and competent action. 2025 was a transitional year. Something shifted. This is not a piece on panic or prediction. It is about perception. The world feels less stable than it has in my adult life, yet my own philosophy feels more settled.
Certain continuities morphed into eventualities last year. Changes that seemed like one-offs at the time became irreversible. Just one of these bad things being the feeding of USAID into the woodchipper to quote one wealthy maniac. Some estimates suggest several hundred thousand people have died as a result of the gaps in global aid since. Most of these children.
The global system hasn’t collapsed. However, trust in the way of things has been eroded. Trust in global institutions, alliances, and shared narratives has been put to the test. Found wanting. The new baseline for geopolitics is uncertainty. The very party that upheld the international rules-based order has explicitly begun abusing and undermining it. Collectively, we enter the multi-polar world order without a map.
What about us?
We in the UK are standing downstream of these forces. We are collectively living through the initial stages of a period of long-term instability. There may be a psychological toll for us. The main problems at present seem to be that transport doesn’t work, the job market is brutal, wages are stagnant, and the price of everything keeps going up. Meanwhile migrants and religious communities are scapegoated constantly. This leads normal people to dehumanizing and even demonizing others.
I’ve discussed above how several strands of thinking and influences have come together. For me, when external events threaten to become overwhelming, internal orientation becomes non-negotiable. Creating this personal philosophy may seem like an exercise in self-indulgence. But I feel it’s a necessary one.
I don’t offer this as a template. Its not a blueprint. I’m not saying join my cult. Rather, do examine your defaults, anchor yourself, and get active for the uncertain times ahead.