Are we living in a state of unrest?

Panic no longer arrives with a bang. It slips in quietly these days, through headlines, notifications, WhatsApp forwards, and hushed conversations at tea stalls. We don’t go looking for it, yet we are always on alert. Each day begins not with calm, but with a mental scan: What’s gone wrong today?

That quiet vigilance turned into a roar in mid-June, when a flight from Ahmedabad crashed moments after takeoff. Eyewitnesses recalled smoke, confusion, sirens… and the wreckage near a medical college hostel. It felt close, raw, devastating.

A few days later, while watching disturbing reels from the crash site, a neighbour of mine broke down. “My husband travels so much by air,” she whispered, eyes still glued to the screen. Her tears weren’t just for the victims, they were for the quiet fear we have all begun to carry.

This wasn’t an isolated event. Barely a week later, on June 19, a flight from Guwahati to Chennai sent out a mid-air fuel emergency. It was diverted to Bengaluru. Thankfully, the plane landed safely. But those minutes in the air were anything but calm. Some passengers were visibly shaken. One described how quiet it got, no one speaking, just sideways glances and hands gripping armrests. Time, they said, seemed to stretch.

And this wasn’t the last. Since then, several other mid-air scares have made headlines… each one deepening that quiet, collective anxiety we now live with.

Not just in the skies. The ground feels shaky too. Exam paper leaks shattering students’ futures, rising anxiety over women’s safety, job insecurity even in well-paid sectors, and the everyday violence that flashes briefly across our screens before the next shock replaces it. It’s not just news anymore. It’s personal.

Meanwhile, beyond our skies, the world feels like it’s simmering. The conflict in the Middle East has deepened. Missiles, drone strikes, cities plunged into sudden chaos. Sirens shriek overhead. People are running. Embassies are sending out alerts. There’s noise, panic, movement. It doesn’t feel far away now. It’s seeping into headlines, homes, and hearts across the globe.

Troops deploy. Warplanes roar. Haunting images of scorched skylines flicker across our feeds, numbing us into regularity. Global anxiety doesn’t wait for official declarations anymore. It travels faster, through timelines and dinner table whispers.

This isn’t just news, it’s our nervous system now

Somewhere along the way, we stopped reacting to crises with shock. Now, we pause, brace, scroll… and keep moving. This isn’t desensitisation. It’s survival.

A friend shares how she now watches and scans the faces of the airline crew before even stepping into a flight. “Not that I’m paranoid,” she said, “just… trying to be more alert.” Another told me her colleague broke down quietly after a stretch of long meetings. There was no single trigger, just the weight of it all: deadlines, parenting, news updates, bills, and that unnameable unease that lives in our bones now.

We are not just living through anxiety. We are living with it, like background noise that never shuts off.

Why even silence feels suspicious now

Periods of calm now feel eerie. If nothing goes wrong for a while, our minds start preparing for something to snap. That’s the new normal… anticipatory dread.

In India, we call it ‘tension.’ We don’t always have a clinical word for it. We sip chai, forward motivational reels, do a small puja, and say “I’ll manage.” But inside, we are restless.

Even happiness feels uneasy now. A child’s success brings with it the stress of what lies ahead. A mother, thrilled about her daughter’s admission to a renowned university in Kolkata, is already making frantic calls, asking if the campus will be safe for her timid child. Today, even gentleness feels like a risk.

Weddings, too, now come with footnotes. There’s travel chaos, stifling heat, or that nagging sense that something might go wrong. Joy, it seems, always arrives with disclaimers.

And still, we keep showing up. Smiling in meetings, replying to texts, booking tickets. Because functioning has become our disguise.

Are we okay? Not really. But we don’t say it

The truth is, many of us are moving through life in a sort of emotional turbulence. Not in freefall… but not steady either.

We no longer expect rest. We have grown accustomed to overstimulation. Our phones aren’t just tools, they are radar. We don’t check them for gossip anymore, but for warnings. Floods. Heatwaves. Strikes. Crashes. Wars. Scrolling isn’t about escape, it’s about getting ready for what’s next.

And when nothing happens for a day or two, we wonder: Is something coming?

A few things that might help

There’s no magic fix. But maybe we can begin small.

Notice when the body is tense. Are your shoulders tight? Are you clenching your jaw?

Ask and wait. When you check in with someone, mean it. Give them space to not be okay.

Claim small pauses. Turn off the news for an hour. Take a walk without your phone. Let quiet in.

There’s a cost to being constantly tuned in. Just keeping up with the world can take a quiet toll on our emotional well-being. And some days, getting by doesn’t mean we are okay… it just means we are trying not to fall apart.

We weren’t meant for carrying so much, all the time. Some days, it’s more than enough to just pause and say, “I’m tired. Really tired.” Or to admit, quietly, “I’m not okay today.”

In a world that never stops moving, that refuses to slow down, that kind of truth, spoken gently and without shame, holds its own quiet strength.