Dear Readers,

One of the things I write about often is the stories we tell ourselves. The meanings we assign to things and the assumptions we make when we don't know the whole story.

I've realized there are probably a few stories readers tell themselves about this newsletter, too. That someone helps me run it. That it makes more money than it does. That there are enough paying subscribers that one more won't make much difference.

How to Live is a little mom-and-pop shop where I'm both mom and pop. Every essay is read, researched, written, edited, formatted, publicized, and sent by me. I designed the website, update and maintain it. I'm the entire admin team, the social media division, and the customer service department.

If you've been reading for a long time and have been meaning to become a paid subscriber, I'd love for you to do it today.

Every paid subscription buys me a little more time to do the work you're reading right now. Enough of them determine whether I can keep doing it.

TL;DR is a monthly digest summarizing the vital bits from the previous month's How to Live newsletter so you don't miss a thing.

Here’s everything from MAY—the free essays you might have missed and what paid subscribers got behind the paywall.

Years ago, during a therapy session, I mentioned that I’d been feeling a strain of sadness that wasn’t going away.

Was it depression? Not exactly—I wasn’t sad in the traditional way, i.e., I wasn’t crying all the time. I wasn’t crying at all. What I felt was an un-feeling, not a deadness per se, but a flatness that threatened to overwhelm me with its weight when I went toward it. I was not doing as well as I thought.

I tried to explain the emotionless emotion, describing it as a low-grade monotony, as though the world and I were both wallpapered in a boring sameness, lacking dimensionality.

Imagine a persistently low hum that never oscillates or changes tone.

That me.

When I tried pinpointing when it began, I was side-swept by an uncomfortable realization—maybe I’d been like this forever and was only now recognizing that, at my core, I am a perennially sad human person.

In response to all this, my therapist said it sounded like “Dysthymia,” a word I’d never heard of.

She explained that it’s a milder form of depression—it’s also referred to as Persistent Depressive Disorder (I’ll refer to it by both names in this post), but it expresses itself differently than clinical depression. 

Rather, it’s got its own personality and features that are distinct to the condition.

Mainly, it’s long-lasting and stubborn.

Dysthymia is a Greek word that means “bad state of mind.”

And, like depression, it can interfere with your daily life, which certifies it as a clinical disorder. But here’s the kicker: According to the DSM, depression is only diagnosable as a clinical disorder when a person experiences five or more symptoms in the same two-week window, unlike dysthymia, which is diagnosed as a clinical disorder only after suffering for TWO YEARS.

The French government was concerned about its kids.

In 1882, the Jules Ferry Laws were passed, mandating all children attend public school. This included children with severe mental differences, children who were constantly overlooked and excluded from activities that made up everyday life.

The inclusion of these students caused an imbalance in the classroom. Teachers were struggling. They didn’t know how to teach uniformly when some students couldn’t comprehend basic math and others were zipping through equations.

Something had to be done, but what, and more importantly, how?

The government assembled a special commission of experts to help sort out this conundrum. Among them was Alfred Binet, the psychologist and director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne.

With a background in individual psychology, Binet took the lead, and the solution Binet landed on would mark the start of the modern IQ testing movement

In 1899, Binet was invited to join the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child. This group made up of psychologists and educators, aimed to study struggling students and figure out how to identify the ones who needed help.

Binet went to work establishing methods to identify the “normal” children and the “abnormal” children, creating a system of measuring the difference between the two groups.

In 1903, he published L'Etude experimentale de l'intelligence (Experimental Studies of Intelligence), describing his methods.

Around this time, he began collaborating with Theodore Simon, a physician completing his PhD at the Perray-Vaucluse psychiatric hospital, where he worked with children with intellectual disabilities. Simon had contacted Binet in 1898, drawn by the same questions Binet was pursuing. They were co-creators of what would become the test.

Together, they pursued their shared interest: studying the correlation between physical growth and intellectual development by testing the “abnormal” children and creating a number of mental tests.

Meanwhile, one of the French government’s most pressing issues was carrying out the Jules Ferry Law, requiring all French children to attend school.

Classrooms were now teeming with children of drastically different aptitude, competence, and intelligence levels.

They wanted to identify the children who needed the most help. Instead of doing what would have been done before the Jules Ferry Law, which was to send these kids to asylums, they planned to educate them in separate schools.

The problem was identifying the kids who were struggling the most.

Every May, for Mental Health Awareness Month, I put together the most comprehensive, inclusive mental health resource I can. Therapy directories. Crisis lines. Books. Podcasts. Support groups. Resources for seniors, for LGBTQ communities, for Black and brown and Asian communities, for caregivers, for kids, for the people who love people who are struggling.

Because finding help shouldn't require already knowing how to find help.

The list grows every year, because the need is that large, and because no single resource should live in a silo.

What started as a modest list of resources soon outpaced my expectations. Take your time. There's a lot here. There’s a special section at the end, just for Senior Citizens.

I’ve included TWO playlists at the very end.) One is to help you cry, and the other is to help you feel happy.

And, as always, please add to this list in the comments! And don’t be shy about alerting me to bum links.

📌 This essay is for paid subscribers.

Reading / Thinking / Listening / Looking

What a strange time to be alive. I’m overwhelmed by the “great flattening” of language by AI, the vast sameness of its output no matter what its fed.

Today, I’m sharing some of the very human things I’ve been doing to cleanse my palate.

Please feel free to add your current doings in the comments!

LISTENING (obsessively)

(I’m stunned by this 21 year old’s innovation and talent)

(Dear God, why did you deprive me of the ability to sing? Is it because I don’t believe in you?)

(I. am. so. crushed. out. on Labi’s younger self).

The rest of the piece covers what I’m reading, watching, and seeing…

Until next week, I will remain,