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I shared a message recently around the idea of singleness being good. And marriage being good too. The idea was to really put the value back on singleness and to deal with the cultural romantic idol we have that meeting the right person will somehow complete us. That when we get married, life will begin and all be lived happily ever after.

The internet is a wonderful place and full of wonderful ideas. It’s also a strange place and full of strange ideas. One such idea surfaced recently from the Instagram feed of animal right activist group, PETA which highlighted the concept Speciesism and attracted a certain amount of attention.

Excess often has a delayed reaction. Think of those moments where you very slightly over indulge - a delicious Sunday roast in Shoreditch, finishing the chocolate eclairs at the park that the kids half-touched or downing the last of the milk because you’re going away on holiday.

Cue 30 minutes later or so and you’re normally regretting the decision you made. Because life is all about balance.

Recently I saw a couple of my Instagram posts go, what I would call, certifiably viral. Interestingly enough, it happened at a time where I was putting close to zero effort into running my account. Let’s take a look at the stats and then we’ll examine some reflections.

My account has approx 1300 followers so not exactly out of this world. A typical post will fair between 30-100 likes. So imagine my surprise when a post spins wildly out of control and reaches 1300 likes just completely out of the blue. And then just days later, another post hit over 2600 likes.

Comfort has become something of a secular god in recent times. Its perhaps better marketed twin, happiness, is frequently stated (by people who I often admire) as the ultimate goal in life. Find your passion, find what makes you happy and go make your dreams happen etc.

But I do find this line of thinking to be somewhat limiting. Because all of us know deep down that happiness is forever fleeting and is so often here one moment and gone in the next.

Today the world is full of statistics, trends, analyses and conclusions. Now more than ever we are being bombarded with data around the current health crisis such as infections, death rates, economic impact and recession.

One thing has become clear though, that even accurate data can be bent out of shape through the context it is given. It’s not just what is being presented but what is not being presented that taints the claims of truth being made.

If you’ve ever used social media then you’ll be all too familiar with the sense of awesomeness that comes when you absolutely boss an Instagram post and the likes come flooding in. Maybe it’s just me but even the best of us find it hard to totally disconnect the appreciation and approval of others to the hardwiring of our soul.

It feels like everybody and their dog is hitting Instagram Live (as well Facebook and others of course) right now. I’m definitely in that category of people experimenting with this side of social media. It’s rare to peruse Instagram without several notifications popping up of friends and people seeking to best use their influence jumping on IG Live.

It’s fair to say that these are interesting times. Within the space of a few weeks (and even more so days), our experience of life as we know it is drastically changing. The coronavirus is affecting absolutely everything, from the health implications all the way to economic uncertainty, mental health, community and so on.

The question now is of course, what do we do? Whilst much of the news is (probably rightly so) devoted to the more serious side of what is happening, I wanted to pull apart the other side of things. Because in every crisis there is a silver lining. Multiple in fact. To acknowledge that isn’t to downplay the severity of what is occurring right now across the world but simply to point our eyes in a different direction.

Often when we think about mental health, we may conjure up images of perhaps the more negative side of the mind such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders or many other things. But having a healthy mind is not just as narrow as overcoming certain issues but is all about the way in which we interact with the world on a daily basis. If physical health is full of nuance, growth, learning and development then so is our journey of mental health.