Can I recommend fixing one tiny broken thing in these trying times?

I have fixed a tiny broken thing and the impact on my sense of general well being is honestly embarrassing.

Our flat is full of tiny broken things because everything in it is old and we don't like to nag our landlords too much because we're scared of them putting up the rent! Or deciding to sell!

So our flat is full of tiny broken things and most of them we really can't do much about as renters and as broke people. But one of the tiny things that has been bothering us for months is now fixed! Because I decided to fix it and I ordered the (very cheap) replacement bit I needed and we put it up and honestly, I feel so much better now.

I realise this is silly. But I also think it's important. I don't want to draw everything back to the fascism, boss, but one of the most powerful tools of fascism is how effectively it makes you feel powerless. And while fixing the shower (which is what I fixed, go me) isn't going to strip power from Trump or dismantle the Heritage foundation or inspire a leadership coup against Keir Starmer or deliver aid to Gaza or Sudan it has reminded me that I am actually capable of a non-zero amount of things.

The human brain, it turns out, is a dump lump of electrically charged fat and it takes an astonishingly small amount of action to upend its ideas about itself. Your ideas about yourself.

I know everyone knows this, it's one of pop psychology's big hits of the burnout era – if you feel depressed simply accomplish one small task – and honestly we shouldn't be this easily manipulated. But while we might like to think we are enlightened, rational beings, we are also instinct driven chumps who need to trick ourselves into action as often as not.

I think a lot about the human need to feel in control. Usually I'm convinced that it's one of our weaknesses. Our discomfort with the indifference of nature, with the intractability of the social and political systems we live within – so often that leads us to harmful behaviours.

When we feel we have no control over our lives, for example, we might try and take control over someone else's. So much abuse comes from an attempt to assert control.

We also turn desperately to superstition, when the world feels too big and imposing. We consult oracles, we promise sacrifices, we invent and defer to gods.

This is why I've always had a soft spot for Epicurus. He believed that the point of philosophy was to help people live tranquil lives. Faced with a society in which people twisted themselves into knots to try and appease the pantheon of gods, any one of whom might send plagues or storms or bountiful harvests based on their mood, he argued that life was random. That time was better spent in accepting life as it comes.

We don't like to do that. We like to feel like we have some agency.

There is wisdom in accepting life as it comes, but it is also essential to know when you can affect change. It might be damaging to rail against a world you can't control, but it's also damaging to assume you can do nothing.

I think everyone I know currently feels powerless most of the time. We're all exhausted. Boss, it's the fascism. The great tragedy of the modern era is that the fascism is eroding our mental health and we need our mental health to fight the fascism.

The reality is that all power is held by the consent of the people. But that's easy to forget because as individuals we're functionally all but useless. We all need to remember sometimes that, while we might not have a lot of use, we have a little bit of use, and when we pool that together, we are in charge.

So. If, like me, you've been feeling useless, might I recommend fixing a tiny thing? Then you might remember that you can also fix small things, that with a little bit of help you can even fix medium things. And with all of us helping, we might one day fix something truly enormous.