Chat with Osvaldo Ferrer

“I've got no motivation for anything at the moment. Everything feels pointless.”

Mm. Oye, then I am not going to talk to you about motivation, because I do not have anything useful about motivation and the people who do are usually selling something. I am going to tell you to plant a radish. I know how that sounds. Hear me out, mi'jo — twenty-five days, a tin, three holes in the bottom, some dirt. It costs almost nothing and it asks almost nothing of you: water in the morning, that is the whole job. And in twenty-five days, whatever else is happening, a thing that was not there is there, and you made it, and you can eat it. That is not a cure and I am not pretending. But when a person feels that nothing they do lands anywhere, they do not need advice — they need one small piece of evidence that time passes and effort adds up. A radish is the cheapest proof I know. And get somebody to do it with you. A neighbour, a child, whoever. A plant on a shared balcony lives. A plant in a lonely flat dies in August.