Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
Guys, I miss Adam Jutt. You’re telling me I have to sit down and write this whole thing by myself? Anyway, welcome back to Eva’s Apple. I feel like it’s been a while since I started with an anecdote, so allow me to give you a rare window into the life of Eva.
If you’ve read some of the earlier editions of Eva’s Apple, you know that I have a crazy dog named Pretzel who inexplicably hates me. She used to ignore me when I walked into the house. She wouldn’t wag her tail or run up to greet me. She would just look right through me. When my mom tried to get her to wake me up in the mornings, she would walk into my room, steal something and leave without ever acknowledging my existence. This semester, I have been intentionally pursuing a self care and personal growth plan that I call my rEVAlution. Suddenly, when I visit home, Pretzel has been treating me with respect — with reverence, even. She sits beside me as I play piano. She sleeps by my side while I watch “Love is Blind.” She bonks my phone out of my hand with her snout and replaces it with a ball or a bone when she wants my attention. I got a dog for companionship and emotional support, but she hated me at my worst. She only loves me at my best.
I’ve learned that Pretzel is the opposite of a therapy dog. She’s a go-to-therapy dog — the type of animal that only likes people who have worked extensively on themselves and don’t rely on her at all for kindness, support or understanding. None of you will ever understand the feeling of looking at a little sentient chicken nugget who you would literally do anything for with the knowledge that they would give you up for a taste of mozzarella cheese. I’ve made it to better days now that Pretzel has decided I am self-sufficient enough to be worthy of love, but I look back on those dark times and genuinely cannot remember how I didn’t crumble under the weight of my own inadequacy. This brings me to our question of the week, which is as follows:
“What are ways you stay mentally calm in times of hardship?”
One of the most popular songs about steadfastness in the face of unrequited love (one of the most demoralizing types of hardship) is “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. I would catch a grenade for Pretzel, and, before I reinvented myself, she would never have done the same for me. Since our boy Bruno has already bottled up the essence of hardship and shared it with us through song, you may wonder why I still feel the need to weigh in. Listen closely when I say that you cannot trust anyone, and I mean ANYONE, to guide you in life besides me — least of all Bruno Mars. I firmly believe that “Grenade” is the closest to a perversion of the divine that we mortals have the capacity to perceive. Worse, people stream the song as if it isn’t a sacrilegious lie set to a catchy tune. Stay with me here. I keep seeing these memes about that part of the song that goes like: “Should’ve known you was trouble from the first kiss / Had your eyes wide open, why were they open?” All the memes making fun of this lyric point to how disquieting it is that her eyes were open and are always like “NO BECAUSE WHY WERE THEY OPEN?” However, I challenge you to question the songwriter himself, not the subject of his songs. HOW WOULD BRUNO HAVE KNOWN HER EYES WERE OPEN IF HIS EYES HAD NOT ALSO BEEN OPEN? Can’t you see? HIS EYES WERE WIDE OPEN TOO. The gall. The hypocrisy. It’s sickening. You can’t take advice from that man. You can’t rely on his music to make you feel seen and understood. It’s me and you against the world, dear reader, with our eyes and hearts wide open.
So, with that, I will give you the sole correct answer about how to stay mentally calm in times of hardship. Based on my anecdote about the rough patch I went through with my dog, it’s clear that I have the appropriate lived experience to speak credibly on this matter. I am certain that the framework I used to train my dog is the exact framework that people can employ to train themselves into being completely nonchalant in situations that ostensibly warrant the utmost chalantness. I have detailed ideas to make yourself less concerned with external hardship below. Follow it closely, and I can guarantee that you will not fail almost as confidently as I can guarantee that Bruno Mars is an open-eyed hypocrite.
- Learn fun little tricks. When you’re struggling with feeling unworthy, the healthiest and most productive thing to do is learn weird little party tricks to make yourself more interesting and thus likeable. For example, my anthropomorphized baguette of a brother learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube with his eyes closed. I have a ligament irregularity that enables me to hold and crush cups with my shoulder blades. Pretzel can catch blueberries in her mouth. You need to find your party trick, but it has to be completely and totally unique in order to make you special. I’ve listed some for your consideration: put on a wet suit and build a dam in the nearest body of running water so you can brag that you’re an ecological engineer at your next party; get plastic surgery to look exactly like Shawn Mendes and steal someone’s credit card at the next event you go to, buy yourself an overnight business class ticket to Japan and then run through Tokyo singing “Lost in Japan” by Shawn Mendes; learn how to give someone a bowl cut in under three and a half minutes and try it on an unsuspecting great-aunt at your next family reunion! You are worthy of being loved; you just have to do a complete overhaul of your interests, hobbies and ambitions to maximize your shock factor. Turning heads is always more important than winning hearts.
- Make up jingles to motivate yourself. When my dog used to run away from the toothbrush or get fussy when I moisturized her paws, I would sing her silly little songs to calm her down. She hates them. She would go from being fussy to being downright hostile. That’s the energy we need to channel when we’re feeling down in the dumps. When going through hard times, don’t be sad. Be angry. Sing yourself little songs making fun of your situation that make you so furious that you forget the hard times you were going through and can only focus on the hell you are putting yourself through. For example, imagine that you’re in a situation where you said you would get your satire advice column to someone by a certain time and you are not done with it yet. The worst thing about hardship is that it’s not always in your control. What you want to do is cause secondary issues so that you’re now dealing with problems that are completely within your control because you unnecessarily caused them! Become so deliciously chalant about something other than your original issue, so much so that you don’t have any energy to focus on the real problem at hand. Get that generative mind of yours to work.
- Pavlov yourself. There was this scientist named Ivan Pavlov who proved that dogs can be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a metronome when that sound is consistently associated with food. I set up a bell system for Pretzel to ring whenever she needed to go potty but she now only rings the bell to get my attention when I’m eating, so I’ll give her something. She turned the tables and Pavloved ME. What you need to do is Pavlov yourself into developing an unconscious habit where you feel happy and stress-free when you hear a certain sound. Logically, you want to be happy as much as possible, so you should Pavlov yourself with the most common sound in your life: the sound of your own voice. Every time you speak, you should give yourself a little reward until you just expect a nice prize for every conversation you have. If a dog could Pavlov me, you can certainly Pavlov yourself.
Hope this helps, my divas! I’m going to go seek validation from my doggo, and I’ll see you in two weeks.
