I was mindful not to write anything promoting Blue Monday. The meaning & intention is heart warming but I find it all too often reminds people of the suffering or the struggles that they are facing. In truth, I wasn’t sure what to add on the subject. I saw some fantastic promotion of mental health charities & a great deal of people discussing the possibilities of simply being kinder to others. I find, most shocking about mental health, is how silent & transparent the illnesses are. Our minds see “disability” as a wheelchair; it has been drilled into us for many years - just think of the painting on disabled parking spaces. For many people, having a disability isn’t easily displayed in public, but mostly hidden under a facade like a smiling face, when in truth the mental & physical symptoms could be almost unbearable. I think we need to start taking every day, every interaction & every individual person with a tad more kindness. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of horrible people out there that don’t deserve our time - those who don’t say thank you when you hold a door open for them! Those who litter! Those who leave the noise on when they are typing on their phone!
I walk down Bold Street every time I am in Liverpool city centre & try to count how many people I walk past. I used to do this to keep myself from having a panic attack - it sounds counterproductive but it would keep my mind so busy that it would, sometimes, help keep the fear at bay. Usually, when I get to the end of Bold Street I look back down the length of the place & wonder: How many people did I walk past that have just found out a loved one had died? How many had just broken up with their partner? How many just had their children taken from them? How many have lost their jobs. How many had just got diagnosed with Cancer?
According to statistics, it would be a good amount & the most important thing to notice is, how would I know? We don’t carry signs with us showing our current mindset or tribulations. Every person we walk past or interact with could be suffering in ways we cannot imagine. So if we can take anything from Blue Monday, maybe it can be to make the possibility of “blue” days less prevalent. There may be no way of doing this on a wide spectrum, or vastly changing the zeitgeist - but individually we can do our bit. I’ll try not to be someone’s reason to feel blue - this also means online - we don’t know how our words can effect someone’s health.
I’m not the best of people, sometimes I even enjoy being hard work. I’m only trying to be a better person now because I’ve exhausted the option of doing the opposite for long enough. It’s not known if we can unhinge & break the chains we have already forged in life a la A Christmas Carol, but I know it is possible for us to stop adding new links to our ever-growing chains. So I propose we start.
I promised a certain percentage of profit to be donated to local mental health & homeless charities. Although my company has yet to turn a profit, due to investing back in the business & building ourselves up from the ground up (I’ve still not taken a wage since June 2019) but I promised to donate - And could not ignore that duty.
Over the past 6 months the company has donated a few hundred pounds to both the Samaritans & The Whitechapel Centre in Liverpool respectively. We will continue to support these causes & others brought to our attention with each sale.
I didn’t make these donations myself, these are from customers, these donations, as small as they may be can sometimes be enough to give someone a meal, a place to stay warm overnight - or just someone to talk to - is there anything more sad & unwarranted, in an overpopulated world, than lonely people?
Without the sales, without the customers, these donations could not happen. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You will never know the specific people you have helped with your purchases, but that’s the point - you shouldn’t need to. They could be walking past you on Bold Street any day. Remember that. And let us all try to make the idea of a Blue Monday a thing of the past.