Finding it real hard to focus on grading tonight. Do we have a hashtag for general anxiety over all this? *Gestures broadly*
@kel might be too on the nose
@scottyorange One cannot appreciate the sunrise without the twilight.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
@scottyorange looks like there is convo at #anxiety :)
“Weltschmerz is the sense both that one is personally inadequate and that one’s personal inadequacy reflects the inadequacy of the world generally,” says Joachim Whaley, a professor of German history and thought at the University of Cambridge. “It is pain suffered simultaneously both in the world and at the state of the world, with the sense that the two are linked.”
@scottyorange
There are many reasons to feel despair with the state of the world today. Isolationist politics are rising on both sides of the Atlantic, and seizing on voters’ frustrations. The last year has seen Europe’s refugee crisis hit record levels, and a stream of police killings in the United States. In a matter of weeks, America may elect a president who has boasted of sexually assaulting women.
The German language, which is filled with wonderful words, has the perfect term to summarize this melancholic feeling: weltschmerz, which translates to “world weariness” or “world pain” (welt meaning world, schmerz meaning pain).
@scottyorange There's always #RandomThoughts, but most of this place has probably—wisely—muted that noise. 🙃😆