The Day I Asked the Machine What Was Wrong With the World

I didn’t ask the question for effect.

There was no dramatic music playing in the background of my life. No breaking news alert. No singular event that pushed me over the edge.

It was quieter than that.

It was the accumulation.

The scrolling.

The headlines.

The arguments.

The addiction stories.

The loneliness I see in rooms full of people.

So I typed the question into a machine.

“What would you say is the worst thing going on in the world?”

I expected something measurable.

War.

Climate collapse.

Economic instability.

Political corruption.

Instead, the answer was one word.

Disconnection.

I felt my shoulders tighten before I understood why.

Not war.

Not poverty.

Not violence.

Disconnection.

From self.

From each other.

From consequence.

I leaned back in my chair and noticed something small: my breath had gotten shallow. Not dramatically. Just enough to signal that something true had landed.

It would have been easier if the answer had been external. Something I could rage against. Something I could locate outside of myself.

Disconnection is not that convenient.

It shows up in the way we talk over each other instead of to each other.

In the way we perform certainty instead of practicing curiosity.

In the way we scroll past suffering until it becomes background noise.

And, if I’m honest, in the moments I abandon myself to keep the peace.

The machine continued.

Unregulated fear scales faster than wisdom.

That line made my stomach drop slightly — not with panic, but with recognition.

I thought about governments.

About corporations.

About institutions built by people who were never taught how to regulate their own nervous systems.

Then I thought about families.

Then I thought about living rooms.

Then I thought about myself — years ago — when urgency felt like power and intensity felt like clarity.

The most dangerous force, it said, is unexamined power fused with emotional immaturity.

I read it twice.

The chair beneath me felt solid. I pressed my feet into the floor without meaning to. There was a part of me that wanted to argue with the answer. To complicate it. To make it more nuanced.

But my body didn’t argue.

It settled.

Because I have seen emotional immaturity amplified by influence.

I have seen fear dressed up as leadership.

I have seen fragility masquerading as strength.

And I have seen the cost.

But what surprised me most was what came next.

The machine did not spiral into despair.

It did not dramatize collapse.

It did not offer a cinematic apocalypse.

It offered a counterforce.

Regulated, embodied individuals who refuse to collapse into chaos.

I felt warmth move through my chest when I read that.

Not adrenaline.

Not urgency.

Warmth.

The kind that feels like being held from the inside.

For years, I thought responsibility meant carrying everything. Managing every room. Anticipating every emotional shift. Preventing rupture before it formed.

I thought strength meant absorbing impact.

But the older I get, the more I understand something quieter.

Stability is not loud.

It does not argue for attention.

It does not demand to be seen.

It simply remains.

When the machine asked me what felt heaviest in my body, I didn’t answer immediately.

Because the question wasn’t about geopolitics.

It was about participation.

Where do I disconnect?

Where do I override my own signals?

Where do I trade steadiness for approval?

The world’s fractures are enormous.

But they are mirrored in miniature inside each of us.

Disconnection scales.

But so does regulation.

Repair is not glamorous work.

It does not trend.

It does not go viral.

It looks like pausing before responding.

It looks like saying no without theatrics.

It looks like refusing to demonize someone for disagreeing.

It looks like choosing clarity over intensity.

The world may be destabilized by noise.

But coherence is built quietly.

I closed the laptop and sat still for a moment.

The headlines had not changed.

The conflicts were still active.

The systems were still strained.

But my nervous system was different.

My breath had slowed.

My shoulders had dropped.

My feet were still firmly planted on the floor.

And I realized something that felt both small and immense at the same time:

The worst thing happening in the world might be disconnection.

But the most powerful thing happening in the world is reconnection.

Not through spectacle.

Through steadiness.

Not through dominance.

Through maturity.

Not through collapse.

Through remaining vertical when chaos invites distortion.

The world does not need more intensity.

It needs more regulated humans.

And maybe the most radical thing any of us can do right now

is learn how to stay.

—Flower InBloom