From Messy to Deep

Staying Human by Dr. Vivek Murthy
Substack, October 6, 2026

Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general of the United States, is perhaps best known among educators for naming isolation and loneliness as public health threats and for sounding the alarm about youth mental health. His blog, aptly named Staying Human, invites a conversation “about how to navigate our messy world to find deep, lasting fulfillment,” with each post offering a reminder of how to keep learning what it means to be human. In “The Two Sides of Mattering”, Murthy reflects on what it means to matter, offering the important reminder that, “We matter simply because we exist.” In “Finding Joy in Tough Times,” he cautions readers against falling “into the trap of thinking that joy appears only when everything is going perfectly.” His latest post, “The Gift of Feeling Small” shows how awe is more than a pleasurable sensation: it can reshape our perspective and the ways we engage with the world around us. Drawing on the research of UC Berkeley’s Dr. Dacher Keltner alongside his own experiences, Murthy describes feeling small not as feeling insignificant, but as feeling like a part of something larger. At one point, he realizes, “Sometimes, what I need when I am overwhelmed is not for my problems to disappear, but a reminder that my problems are not the whole world.” For schools and educators working to protect and improve the wellbeing of our students, Staying Human offers reflections that can inspire us all to be a little more human with one another.

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