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photo: Sam Skapin

Ohio-based punk band Heart Attack Man masterfully navigate the realm of existentialism with a playful twist on their latest album, Joyride The Pale Horse. With a lighthearted approach, they mock the inevitability of death, the fragility of life, and the banality of existence. Yet, amidst this comedic facade, they manage to strike a delicate balance, inviting listeners to ponder reality with a smile and enough energy to make you dance.

Elements of this album feel like a return to form for the trio as they take aim at everything from AI and the death of art to outright talking about being ready to go whenever the time comes. Their ability to discuss complex and uncomfortable matters and give them some humor is a real gift for songwriters and musicians. We don’t always need to be smacked in the face with stuff that makes us cry because there’s enough of that, but it’s nice to get a laugh on some matters, or even a different perspective. This album will make older fans fall head over heels with the band once again while also making newer fans want to play it on repeat for weeks.

The Noise had the chance to talk with the band -- Eric Egan [vocals, guitar], Adam Paduch [drums], and Ty Sickels [guitar] -- diving into topics such as the prevalence of posers in the music scene, the potential threat of AI to creativity, and the enduring necessity of hope in the face of impending doom.

First of all, this album is so fucking good. I'm so excited that the rest of the world can share in this experience. How are y'all feeling in this moment now that this album's gonna be out so soon?

ERIC EGAN: I'm feeling great and really excited. Thank you for the kind words. You know we're all super stoked!

Your last record, Freak of Nature, was a very in-your-face, politically-charged, aggressive body of work, and this record has those elements too, but it diversifies a little bit in what it encapsulates. There are themes of mortality, impostor syndrome, and the desensitization of the existing. Did writing about those things and focusing on those topics help you reckon with your own mortality and the fact that we live in a very desensitized, unempathetic time in the world right now?

Eric: Yeah. To reference the previous album, in the overall tone, the tone of this album felt very natural as we progressed and grew as a band. If we had come back with Freak of Nature 2, and it was just a copy of the last album, that would have felt forced, and it would have been a bit exhausting. It has its place, and it's fun, and I'm glad that we explored that, but there didn't seem to be much of a need for us to hit the same nail on the head twice. This felt more natural with where we were in our lives and our band's career. It made more sense to broaden things and get more introspective about it.

ADAM PADUCH: I mean, Eric definitely takes care of the lyrics. So all those themes are his choice, but we definitely talked about them while he was writing the songs and sending us demos. But in terms of the sound of the album, though, I think that we decided to go back a bit to the basics and how we were doing stuff before. Back where it's more sounding more of -- there's like, cool sounds and cool things in there production-wise but it does go back to more of the earlier stuff that we have where it's just like a band playing. The last record we definitely experimented with a lot more of like drum machines and kind of like weird noises and stuff like that. But we wanted to make it sound more raw and just like a band playing, if that makes sense.

You cited bands like Type O Negative -- shout out, Peter Steele -- Quicksand, Hum, and Failure, as inspirations, and you have this really cool, gritty 90s fuzz that seeps throughout the whole record. What is it about those artists and those decisions that really speaks to you? Can you expand on those kinds of creative choices?

Eric: For me, like with a lot of the influences that we pull from, there's just a certain strain of bands where -- it's hard to exactly put into words -- but I feel like certain bands vibrate at a certain frequency and personally I am very receptive to a lot of that kind of 90s alternative stuff, but also, I don't know [anyone] that's kind of doing something a little different, that's kind of in between a few other things. And, like, not exactly the easiest band to categorize. I guess that interests me a lot, personally, and with pulling influence from there and how we craft that into what we're doing with this album. You mentioned that that kind of fuzz. It was very deliberate in a sense because, you know, we wanted to kind of push out against, like tonally, what I guess is like normal and try to carve out something for ourselves that is a bit more unique, and kind of, as I said, vibrates in its own way that is a bit more distinct, like something that you could hear before you even hear any lyrics or vocals or anything. Like you hear it [and] you know that's Heart Attack Man.

Does anyone else want to add anything to that?

TY SICKELS: So a big thing we found in our past records is that we were big fans of the Weezer chord.

The Weezer Chord?

Ty: Yes, it's like the A-string power chord, but you bar the E string too to thicken it up. 

Eric: It makes it real beefy.

Ty: Yeah, whereas on this record, we experiment a little more with drop tunings and stuff, so there's more hum chords, which is basically the same idea as the Weezer chord, except your one string is tuned down. So I think just that slight shift, which might not seem like a lot, is two completely different things [and] adds a whole other dynamic to our sound and nudges them into that weird in-between spot that Eric was talking about earlier.

Eric: Yeah, it adds a whole dimension to some chords and the chord shapes. And sometimes, it even changes how we approach songs on this because, if we transcribe some of the drop tuning songs up to a normal tuning, it would sound totally different even if it's only a half step down. Sometimes those slight fine-tunings and tweaks can completely change how a song hits and feels. With many of these songs and reevaluating them, as Adam said, it was a return to form, and in many ways, just in how we approached it. But at the same time, that return to form wasn't completely just like, "Okay, let's copy and paste Fake Blood," for example. It's more like dialing back into some of the more intangible qualities of what excites us, about what we know how to do, but change it up in its own way. And when you hear this record or a song on this record, it's like, "Okay, this is from this point in the band's career." I guess it's not like an early song per se, but it's kind of just taking the best of and all that we know how to do well together, and just like juicing it up in a new way.

Give it the juice.

Eric: Give it the juice!

Adam: A big thing that can't be understated is that we went back to the guy who engineered and produced Thoughts & Prayerz and Fake Blood and he was a big fan of the sound we were going for. So he definitely played a big part in helping us achieve that sound. We told him what we wanted it to sound like and what we were going for and he grew up listening to that kind of stuff. He's a little older than us so he was very excited and enthusiastic about getting us to sound that way and I feel like he is a huge part of why it sounds the way it sounds.

Finding the right producer who matches your wavelength is so important.

Adam: Yeah, he's just perfect. He's perfect for us in so many ways. Since we started working with him -- when did we start working with him? In 2018? 2019?

Eric: End of 2018.

Adam: He has just changed how I write drum parts and how I think about drums because he's also a drummer. He plays in a bunch of bands and is an amazing drummer. I don't want to speak for Ty and Eric, but he also broadened their minds about effects, layering guitars, layering vocals, and knowing when to pull back and not do too much. I hope people also understand how important he is to the whole process for us.

Eric: Yeah, and to go off of that, how he approaches vocals. I would do my thing vocally, but then he changed my view based on how he approaches harmonies. He was helping me tap into some wacky harmonic ranges and stuff, and I'm like, "I love that you thought of that, I would not have." So it's like Adam said, it can't be understated how important getting in with the right producer is for the whole process, really. His name is Brett Romnes. He listens to just so much music, you know? He's into many different types of bands; he's a wellspring of knowledge when it comes to pulling from cool places of inspiration.

Adam: Yeah, it's really cool. At the end of every day -- there were maybe two or three days when we didn't do this in the three weeks we were there, we did this a couple times last time that we were there as well -- we're in the studio that has these amazing speakers and we would all get a song or two to play on the speakers, and none of us would talk, we would just listen to the music super loud on the speakers. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but we were also drawing inspiration from that. Showing each other things, Brett sharing new songs with us, or even listening to songs that we've heard a million times differently, or getting to hear everything the way it was intended to be heard -- that was one of my favorite parts of every day. I loved doing that. It was so fun.

Well, I'm glad that y'all had such a positive relationship with this person and that he has been integral in crafting such amazing work from the three of you. 

Eric: He's like a big brother to all of us.

Yeah, it seems he inspires you as musicians and people, which is really important, especially in this industry.

Eric: It's definitely rare. He's just a perfect fit; he's our guy.

Adam: He's good at telling when you're getting frustrated. He's very good at piping you back up and saying, "It doesn't matter." Brett would always say in the studio, "We're just having a sleepover. We're just playing with toys. We're just like, having snacks, that's all." Or, "Look at how cool this is." He made it a fun experience, reminding us that this is not a big deal, we're just having fun.

Adam: It definitely changes how you feel about it sometimes because, you know, recording is super fun, but it can also be very frustrating at times. So he kept the vibe very chill, and then you're like, "Oh my God, how did we get so much done?"

I know that writing and recording can be very daunting and stressful. How do the three of you stay grounded and level-headed in those moments of the process where you're putting so much emotion into this? Brett was an integral part of that as well, it seems.

Eric: Brett is a good helping hand in not getting too far away from ourselves, or too discouraged, per se. I don't know. Speaking for myself, if I throw my voice or if my voice feels froggy, I'm just not on for the day. I don't know, I always think it is what it is. It will get done. We're doing the best that we can. This is what we love doing. This is the dream. We're all doing this, we're all passionate about it. It will get done one way or another, and it will not always be a straight line. Every day, when you do the same thing, you must rest for a couple of days. For example, we'll have days off if I have to rest my voice. It's not a sprint, as much as I want it to be sometimes, because it's so exciting being there, and it's fun cracking into these ideas and stuff and laying them all down. But I don't know; what helps keep me grounded is thinking about the finish line, rather than immediately focusing on what's right there. It's a challenge. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated if you're not nailing something, or for me, whether it's singing or guitar stuff, but I keep in mind we'll get it eventually, we do have time.

You've got to think the long game versus the instant gratification. 

Ty: I mean, obviously, like we said before, Brett is such a key component to it. And I'll echo what Eric said. It's gonna get done, we're gonna get it done, and if it means spending all day on this one guitar part, that's okay, because it's not like it's our last day or whatever, or in the middle of the session. We're good. That's the mindset I try to stay in at all times. It's just like, "It's gonna get done. You're gonna play it great. You've been playing guitar, bass, drums, or whatever for how long?" It's not the most impossible thing in the world to do, to play this part, like, "you will get it, you are capable." It's like, [sings] "This is my fight song." It's like that.

Fight song, like the "Fight Song?"

Ty: Yeah, if I'm struggling with the guitar part, that song starts playing in my head.

Eric: So true, Ty.

Adam: What helped me a lot was that I would go on a super long walk in the mornings. Every morning, I wake up really early, we usually start around noon, so I would go to this park, walk around, get a coffee from Dunkin Donuts, and go on a couple mile walk because I need to get that energy out because I just get really anxious. There was one song that was really difficult for me to record and track because it was a fast song with a click which I've never done before. Having time where I could go outside helps, and once you're in the studio all day, it does start to feel like it blurs, and you lose track of time. It's like you're in there and you're hearing the same thing over and over and over again. I would like to go outside and take a little walk. The studio's location is absolutely beautiful. It's in New Jersey, right on this beautiful lake. The back door has a patio overlooking it, so it lets me reset even just taking a couple of seconds to go outside and have some coffee, smoke, or something. It was a huge thing for me. I'm just saying, "Okay, I've been in here for too long.. I'm getting in my head about this. I need to take a break," or as the kids say, "touch grass."

Eric: Also throwing it back to what we were talking about earlier, something that was very helpful with staying grounded and not having it all blur together so endlessly. Like Adam said, when you hear the same things over and over and over again, I think that sort of ritual that we made for ourselves at the end of the night, just sitting down and sharing music with each other, listening on these amazing speakers, I think that helped kind of break up the monotony of hearing the same guitar take over and over again. At the end of the day, we are all huge fans of music; we don't just make music; we are fans who also make music first and foremost. Getting into that ritual of just being able to enjoy music together helped break it up and kept us grounded. With all of us sitting there taking it all in, man, it was awesome. This is what it's all about. It's all about the music, whether it's the music we're making or getting to experience it and helping keep things fresh for ourselves. That was also very important.

Taking that time also cements your purpose and the purpose of the record. A side note, a good place to touch grass the next time you're in New York, circling back to Type O Negative, there's a tree in Prospect Park dedicated to Peter Steele.

Eric: I didn't know that!

Yeah, he used to work for Prospect Park back in the day.

Eric: I read about that, but I didn't know there was a dedicated tree.

There's a tree and bench dedicated to him and they're covered in Type O Negative memorabilia. 

Eric: I need to see that.

I believe there's some celebration every year at the tree but don't quote me on that. I highly recommend it next time you're in New York.

Adam: That's the horniest tree ever.

Eric: That's one tortured bench. 

Yeah, probably.

Eric: It just looks like sad and horny

Adam: And shredded.

Eric: Yeah, and also seven feet tall, basically. That is now on my bucket list. I need to see that.

If you had to summarize the motto of this album in one sentence, what would it be? I took away from it, "Life is crazy and we all die, but it's okay."

Ty: That's where my head was going. Like, "Don't be afraid. It's all good." Kind of in that realm.

Eric: To throw it back to Brett, something he would always say is, "I'm not scared." If we're like, "Oh, should we try this out? Should I do this?" He'd say, "Fuck it, I'm not scared."

Adam: Easy. "This is my fight song, take back my life song."

Love it.

Eric: That's exactly what I've been trying to think of this whole time, but more in the face of death.

There has been much coverage of this record, including discussions about the song "Spit" and your thoughts on AI, technology, etc. If you're tired of talking about that, that's totally okay; we can move on..

Eric: No, I'd rather talk about AI than Twitter.

I actually had no questions prepared about Twitter...

Adam: It's called X, dude.

Eric: My bad. Right, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Elon Musk's sacred playground.

Circling back, I know there's been a lot of coverage on your song "Spit" and your thoughts on AI technology and how it contributes to destroying creativity, as it has been slowly taking over every aspect of life. What do you say to people who don't or choose not to recognize that AI can potentially be so destructive to creativity, and see it more like a tool?

Eric: Yeah, that's the thing, you can always say, "Oh, it's a tool." When it comes to the creative process and being a human being who does creative things for a living, part of what makes it so special is how innately human creation is. AI is gonna progress, how it's progressing, it's kind of this inevitable landslide, if you will. I'm not trying to come off as an old man yelling at the cloud, saying, "Get off my lawn," or move into the woods and start making bombs and stuff. However, it's a slippery slope regarding the creative process. Suppose there are things that the manufacturing process of something can be streamlined by AI, and it's not completely putting a human being out of a job. In that case, I don't have anything to say if that's optimized. But it's a slippery slope when AI dips its toes into the creative process, when people use it for those purposes. Ironically, using AI that way slowly weathers away at people's abilities. When you're a creative person, you have to exercise your creativity, it's like a muscle, just like anything else, and I think that if you just lean on AI to generate these star ideas, even if it's just a tool, I think being able to come up with them on your own, in my opinion, is a skill in and of itself. When you're leaning on generative AI to do that for you, it takes away from it. The human creative process is something that shouldn't be tampered with and humanity can come up with really awesome and cool things; things that change the world and if someone can come up with something by writing a book, writing a song, or whatever it may be, it can completely change people's lives -- people that person will never, ever meet. It has endless possibilities, and there's something about it with the generative AI conversation which has the strong possibility of debasing that.

One of the things that makes art so moving is its ability to connect us.

Eric: For me personally, that's kind of the line, where if you're a musician and you're using AI to write your music, at a certain point it isn't as much of a personal experience. Are you trying to express yourself and create this work of art, so to speak, that is a part of you, or are you just trying to sell people something? There's plenty of music out there that is vapid and meaningless and being sold to people as if there's no real purpose for it, other than that. I'm not even making a judgment call on that because that's [not] necessarily a bad thing. There's plenty of music that I listen to that is not profound, deep, or meaningful in any way.

Except for "Fight Song."

Ty: Except for that one.

It's an anthem of a generation.

Eric: Oh, of course, I'm not talking about "Fight Song" when I'm talking about that, but Adam and Ty both know I listen to plenty of like, terrible, terrible slop.

Adam: I mean, we all do it.

Eric: Yeah, we all do it, and I'm not gonna sit here and say, "Oh, everything that I listen to has to be profound and meaningful." and you know, I'm sitting here smelling my own farts. At the end of the day, when it comes to the creative process, I think we have to be careful about it.

Adam: I mean, even in Photoshop there's a button where you can type in something and an AI generates images for you and I think that is just fucking weird. It's a program you're supposed to use to create artwork and create things. Eric and I always do this thing when we're looking at album artwork or something, and even if it's not AI, it somehow looks like it is. It's just generic and I hate that it's hard to figure out what is and isn't AI anymore. At this point, I feel like in a sense I know–I wouldn't say it's a good thing–but it's like weeding out people you can tell are using it that's a perfect point you know, because like there are certain things like….I am also a visual artist, and while I'm not the best illustrator, you couldn't tell AI to draw something the way I do because I'm not that good at drawing. So you can tell when the human flaw element in art and AI doesn't have it. They can't do hands for some reason, and hands are hard for me to draw. It's like the hardest thing to draw, but it's just one of those things where, at this point, I feel like we can tell the difference. It's disheartening, though, when you see a band release a record and they did their album covers clearly [with AI], and I'm like, "So you're supposed to be artists making music, but you don't value art enough to actually pay an artist to make something for your art?" I know a couple of bands that have done this from people talking to me about it and stuff, and they're like, "Well, I don't want to pay an artist $300, "and I'm like, "Oh, $300?" That's nothing.

Eric: It's like, then why should anyone pay them for anything?

Adam: I would never throw anyone under the bus about this, but I've seen and even heard an artist, what was that? Oceana? This was actually a thing that happened, and it's public knowledge. Is that what they're called, Eric?

Eric: Yeah, not Oceana, it's Oceano.

Adam: They're like an old deathcore band, and they hired an artist to do their tour poster. They said they didn't like the art and didn't pay him for it because they didn't want to use it. Then they released the tour poster, and it was an AI-generated poster that was off of his idea. It looked like what he did, but they just had AI generate it, so they didn't have to pay the artist. So that, to me, is super fucked up. 

Eric: That's grimy.

Adam: So it's like, you did like the idea, you didn't have the idea, and you're like, "Okay, we don't have to pay this guy." He was asking for at most 500 bucks, and that's not even half of their guarantee for one headlining show. I bet they're making a couple of grand plus merch. You can't pay somebody who's spending their time and, like Eric said, using their mind to come up with the idea, which is the hardest part. I'm making posters for most of the shows we're doing right now, and the hardest thing is coming up with the idea for each poster. Once I'm doing it, that part is easy, I can go into it, and I know what to do, and add stuff to it, but coming up with the idea is the hard part. So they had this guy come up with the concept and show it to them, and then they're like, "Oh, we don't like it," and then they just had AI make it. That is just so fucked up but that's just one example I can probably name ten more things that I've heard of people doing like that but I wouldn't throw them under the bus, because that one was all over the internet.

What do you hope for the future of the music industry and artists as we continue to battle AI's uprising and integration into society?

Ty: I'm gonna tell you it's dark. 

Eric: Yeah, it's dark, but one thing that I'm hopeful of though is that it's a very unforgiving climate. It's a very thankless, inglorious industry, so I hope that as time progresses, and as things keep going and as we keep running around this hamster wheel, I hope that the people who aren't about it, who don't like music and aren't actual music fans, get out of the music industry. I hope that in the future, people who aren't fans of music won't mess around with the music industry. I think they need to leave. They need to never come back. If you want to be in the music industry, you must like music.

Adam: I mean, we know a lot of people. Again, I won't name names, but we come across people who don't listen to music and I'm like, "What the fuck do you mean you don't listen to music?"

Ty: It's like, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Eric: So many people have stopped trying to discover new music. They turn 28 years old, and they're like, "Okay, cool. Everything that I've listened to at this point, I can check out and I don't need to listen to anything new."

Adam: Go get a fucking day job somewhere if you don't like music, like what the fuck?

Eric: I don't think people like that should be booking bands. People like that should not be managing bands.

Adam: To be fair, it's mostly booking agents and managers who are people who don't fuck with music.

Eric: There are people in bands that definitely don't fuck with music, like we do.

Adam: We know some of those people, too.

Eric: You meet people in bands sometimes, and you're like, "There's no fucking way you like your own band, dude. There's no way."

Adam: Oh my god, that happens too much, honestly.

Eric: My hope for the future of the music industry is that, if that could be my singular answer, I hope there's less of that. There needs to be a purification of the music industry and the music industry needs to be by and for musicians and people who genuinely love music. No more posers.

No more posers. Get out.

Ty: Yeah, get these posers out of here. It's so hard now, because it's so much easier nowadays than ever before to get really popular online before you've ever played a show or anything. So it's so easy now for people to find themselves there and just in it. They're in the industry. They're selling out theaters, and they just, they've never been on tour before. What I'm really thankful for with our band is that we grind it. We've been doing it before this band. We were doing it with other bands. We played in people's houses and shut down abandoned bars. We really put our whole ass into this shit. So when you come across these people who are overnight artists with great success in the industry, they are working with people who are like, "Well, I was a business major, but I don't really know anything about the music industry." Get out of here. We fucking worked for this shit.

Adam: You can tell when these people have a record out, and it's getting pushed on Spotify. It's super hard. We've done tours with a bunch of bands like this, where it's like, "Holy shit, this band has like a million streams. Like a million monthly listeners," and you go on a month on tour with these bands, and you're like, "They have no fans." Nobody likes them. Who are these people streaming this? It's fake. It's all just inflated.

Eric: It's just fake bullshit. So less of that would be nice.

As someone who regularly screams into the void, shout out to screamintothevoid.com, I really love tracks like "Call of the Void" and "Quit While I'm Still Ahead," especially whenever Eric sings "Fuck this I'm out." It just speaks to my soul. So, what right now is your favorite track on the album and what song are you excited to play live?

Eric: My favorite song is "Lay Down and Die," track four, I think? Is that correct? Yeah, that's my favorite. I don't know, I just really love it. It's very personal and it's a really fun live song.

Ty: I'll switch it up, because I was gonna say "Lay Down and Die" too but I know that's also Eric's favorite so I gotta keep things fresh around here. I think one of my favorites, and one that I'm really excited to get into live and figure out what we're gonna do with it, is "One Good Reason" because I love the kind of idea behind it. It's like, "I don't want this small talk BS, let's just get on with this, or I'm out of here," you know? It's so cool and the whole ending of the song is so fucking badass and how it all came together. We had a demo of it and just the entire ending of that song became so much more than what it was to me before we went into the studio and it completely changed the whole song's dynamic. I've been texting with the guys who will be playing the other guitar with us. I'm like, "Dude, I'm so excited to play this song with you." It's going to be so cool.

Adam: Yeah, I can't remember what it's called because I'm just listening to them all on one track, because I'm playing them. What's the song before "Gallows" called? 

Eric: "I'll See You There." 

Ty: That's a top-three track.

Adam: This is a stupid drummer thing but I was really excited about that one because there are very few songs that we've ever had where the verses are played on the ride. Usually, I'll play on the high hat or something and I do like a cool ride beat on that one. I just really like how that song came out. That one was natural in how it came together; we had the idea for it, and we pretty much finished it in the studio while tracking it.

Eric: Definitely, and Adam, if I'm not mistaken, you had said that the drum roll that you do at the beginning, you were joking about that at first and just fucking around?

Adam: Everything cool that I ever do on Heart Attack Man records, I do as a joke, and then I look into the booth, and Brett will be there like, "Holy shit, let's do that!"

Eric: And you're like "Oh, I wasn't serious about that!"

Adam: Because I think when I did it, I was trying to be funny, and I went down really far like this, and he was like, "Dude, that was sick." I was just goofing around.

Eric: It's very natural, loosey goosey, but also a very big, crushing song. I love that song too. That one's definitely a favorite because of how big it sounds, the drop tuning, and everything. It's a ripper. I love that one.

If you could go on a joyride with the pale horse with one dead person you admire, who would it be and why?

Tyler: I would Joyride the Pale Horse with Adam Schlesinger. Why? I mean, listen to his work. There are so many amazing songs from movie/TV soundtracks to Fountains Of Wayne. I would love to talk about music and process it with such an amazing writer.

Eric: My pick would HAVE to be Dale Earnhardt. I don't think I need to explain myself further here.

Adam: I would pick Chris Farley. I feel like going out to eat with him would be fun, just seems like it would be a really fun time.

This album arrives at a time when the world is in a constant state of flux. It concludes with the title track, which serves as a sort of pep talk. Do you think we're doomed? What can and should we do to avoid blowing up the planet and fight the increasing sense of despair?

Tyler: I don't think we are actually doomed, although not far off! This may sound corny, but a little love and respect would go a long way these days. Just being able to listen to each other without spazzing out would help. Also, abolishing the automobile and building a vast network of electrified trains!

Adam: I do, at times, feel as if we may be doomed, but other days, I see hope. That is a bad answer, but I am still so unsure of how I feel about this day-to-day. 

Eric: There's a lot of awful out in the world; that's impossible to ignore, but I firmly believe there's a degree of relativity at play at any given time. 2020 was a terrible year in the world, but one of the best years of my life personally. It's easy to want to let despair take over, but if there's anything to be learned from human history, it's that the progression of humanity isn't an easy stroll, and for better or worse, we're resilient beings. Zooming out and thinking about things in this manner helps me a lot and makes immediate, pressing problems feel more manageable. Our struggles are relative and valid, but they're also ultimately a grain of sand in our lives.