It does. I know I tend to underestimate myself, especially when my major depression symptoms kick in hard and I just sleep for months at a time. But sometimes I can help. Sometimes it’s just sweeping floors, or making clever art or being a sympathetic ear to other people who have given up.

We don’t know our futures, and small opportunities to help can still happen.

The very worst sober-gaze-into-the-abyss case is we become another point added to a statistic. Another hate crime victim, another suicide after our benefits were cancelled. Slightly better than that is being the next Mahsa Amini (the victim of the Iranian morality police who sparked the last major civil unrest), or the next George Floyd. But while we will have some of these, we’ll also have survivors who can help to assist other survivors, or to drive the movements toward justice and prevention. These are the beams that make the structures of our moral and political systems that don’t depend on violent enforcement.

In the meantime, make art, make observations, make memes, make conversation. Stay alive for sake of staying alive, because there are a lot of unfilled roles in the progressive social movements we need.