- Above half of them still owned a stuffed animal.

- 40% slept with their stuffed animal.

- 56% kept their favorite beloved stuffed animal from childhood for over 20 years. Of these, over 70% said they'd keep it forever.

- When asked about the first thing that comes to mind about a stuffed animal from childhood, 30% stated a feeling of comfort, 22% stated the memory of who gave it to them, and 19% stated the stuffed animal's appearance.

You, me, and the hardworking guy down the street have all been told how we need to "grow up", "man up", and "stop being weird". And we obediently followed those orders - whether they came from our parents, our teachers, comments on social media, and society. But in the process, we get worn down from the burdens of adult life - especially from the gruelling pain and often unjust chaos of work. After all, when you clock out for the day and finally pull off your uniform and hang up your boots, where's the source of comfort, detox, and relaxation?

The survey results were shared with Dr. Shefali Tsabary, a renowned clinical psychologist, who gave her input on it:

"As children develop independence from their parents, they still yearn for a secure bond with something. In many cases, children turned to stuffed animals, including teddy bears, to help them through this transition. As we enter adulthood and leave home for the first time, it's no surprise that the same object re-enters our life, providing comfort while also helping us work through feelings of uncertainty as we transition into a new life stage."

Whether we admit it or not, the lives of adults - especially young ones in their 20s and even some in their 30s - are riddled with anxiety and thereby insomnia. Despite the lack of solid scientific literature, various independent studies in 2013 and 2016 showed that holding something in a hugging or cuddling manner increased comfort and decreased stress hormones in the blood and saliva. Kinda makes you reflect on those post-work evenings when despite being on the couch, your limbs felt on fire and lips being all twitchy.

It's also cognitive association extended to ultra-long-term: when we were young and scared of various things - the dark, spiders, our mean older sibling, and so on - having that little teddy bear or fluffy cream-colored lamb (given its basic personified features) gave us a sense of ease, comfort, and security. Confidence, even, perhaps.

Plushies are something that's here to stay for many adults who refused to let their inner child's source of comfort and self-soothing die off with aging, and thereby found themselves with a cozily, cute, and boosted ability to mitigate stress and other troublesome factors causing negativity in the mind and psyche. If the idea ever crosses your mind, don't be ashamed of it. Budget it out and hop online, or visit your local Build-A-Bear today.

#PlushiesAreForEverybody

Sources:

Inc., B.-A.-B. W. (2018, June 27). National Teddy Bear Day Survey finds more than half of adult Americans still have their teddy bear from childhood. PR Newswire: press release distribution, targeting, monitoring and marketing. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-teddy-bear-day-survey-finds-more-than-half-of-adult-americans-still-have-their-teddy-bear-from-childhood-300512770.html

Gannett, S. (2023, February 18). The case for sleeping with stuffed animals as an adult. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/adults-who-sleep-with-stuffed-animals/

Backstory

OceanGate, Inc. was founded in 2009 as a privately-owned company in the United States by two men: Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein. Stockton was born into a rich family and decided to focus on the deep sea after space exploration lost its appeal to him.

In 2017, he told journalists: “I wanted to be Captain Kirk and in our lifetime, the final frontier is the ocean”. Given how little of the ocean has been explored since boats and submarines were first invented, it sounds like a reasonable goal which is shared by many people across the world.

Hence, OceanGate was born. The mission was to allow people to experience deep-sea travel to shipwrecks, underwater canyons, and the like. Rush was at the helm of the company and always ensured passion flowed in everyone working there.

Three submersibles were built - Cyclops 1, which aided in the mapping of the Andrea Doria shipwreck, Cyclops 2, and the Titan. Cyclops 1 went down only 240 feet, but was rated to dive up to 1640 feet. Expanding on this, Cyclops 2 was built to dive up to 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) deep and carry five people.

In 2018, the cracks began to show. Several submarine development specialists penned letters to Mr. Rush warning him of the lack of proper certification for the Titan. The director of marine operations, David Lochridge, noted potential dangers for the Titan at such a depth. Subsequently, OceanGate fired him, claiming wrongful release of confidential information. He sued in response. The New York Times reported that the court documents indicated he knew that the Titan’s viewport window was built to withstand pressure at down to 1,800 meters. The Titanic shipwreck rests at 3,800 meters.

Additionally, in 2020, financial records show that Rush and fellow directors on the OceanGate board sold a stake on the company worth 18 million dollars. Interesting, given each passenger was charged $250,000 each for a trip on the Titan. Given its global infamy, it’s no surprise why the Titanic shipwreck was chosen as the perfect underwater location to grab their interest.

Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner, and maritime historian at Campbell University, stated that submersibles do not fall under any governmental safety regulation board (like the FAA with aircraft), and it is up to their engineers to register them with a third-party nautical certification society. The American Bureau of Shipping is one of them. Only one of OceanGate’s submersibles were inspected by them - and it wasn’t the Titan. The Titan had no registration - as a U.S. vessel, with international agencies, or even with any maritime engineering industry groups.

“The intensive time-consuming process of scheduled inspections and certifications is a slow-down and barrier to innovation and exploration potential” - was cited as a reason by Rush to cut back on high-level testing and qualification of the Titan submersible. According the the CBC, OceanGate’s website had a blog post that literally read: "Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.”

Furthermore, the dive point for the Titanic shipwreck site is outside of the marine boundaries of both Canada and the United States. Hence, the Titan was operating under an experimental classification in unregulated waters, but was marketed as a tourist vessel to its high-ticket customers.

A Look at Submersible Design

The first in-person viewings of the Titanic shipwreck were done in 1986 with Alvin, aka DSV-2, built by the United States Navy and operated mainly by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI):

Its pressure hull is in a spherical shape with 2-inch thick solid titanium, with just enough space for three people. This ensured that the water pressure would be equally applied at every point, omnidirectional. It had three dinner plate-shaped viewports - two on the side and one at the front. Periodically, the sphere underwent a six-month-long overhaul about every three years:

The air system was built to allow for up to nine hours of operation. It was built in two parts - the outer body and the sphere. In case of an emergency, the sphere part could be immediately disconnected and rise straight up to the surface:

Now, let’s look at Titan: The hull was cylinder-shaped, with a tapering cone tail and a titanium bowl-shaped front, with a singular large, flat, front-facing viewport:

If you know anything about pressure distribution, a cylinder is not omnidirectionally distributed. Jasper Graham-Jones, an associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, spoke on this:

“Elongating the cabin space in a submersible increases pressure loads in the midsections, which increases fatigue and delamination loads. Fatigue is like bending a wire back and forth until it breaks. Delamination, is like splitting wood down the grain, which is easier than chopping across the grain.”

The idea was to simply mount a bunch of sensors around the pressure hull and analyze the effects of changing pressure on the fly. Before its ill-fated passenger voyage, the Titan had been on over 24 dives prior, which would inevitably produce stress concentrations and weaken the hull.

Later reports uncovered that Rush had merely obtained the hull using scrap carbon fibre from Boeing, and added titanium to give a sense of strength. OceanGate boasted an underwater run-time of 96 hours, with five people onboard. Steering was done electronically using a Playstation game controller and an array of computers, as shown in this still from a demonstration video Rush gave to CBC News. Lights, handles and propellers were all off-the-shelf parts, and the ballast was made with lead pipes.

Pause and re-read the comparison I’ve just made. It only stands with reason that this whole mission was doomed to fail from the start.

The Tragedy, Day by Day

On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible was towed out by a Canadian boat to the North Altantic, 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The boat and Titan maintained contact for 105 minutes, before losing connection. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. Just two years prior, in 2021, Brian Weed, a camera operator for Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown,” partook in a test dive on Titan, and propulsion systems, computers, and comms all malfunctioned. Four 10-hour dives were conducted in 2022 - and the host ship-to-submersible communication was lost each time.

On June 20, 2023, Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises, which prompted the release of ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) to investigate at the pinpointed sources of the noises.

On June 22, 2023, the ROVs located the Titan’s tail cone about 1,600 meters from the bow of the Titanic, providing a sound conclusion that the submersible had indeed imploded, killing all on board.

To give a sense of this by numbers: Water pressure at 3,800 meters of depth is around 4,000 psi, or about two hundred times greater than that of a car tire. Implosion of a cylinder at that pressure would occur at a speed of 1,500 km/h, and be over in just a single millisecond. It’s nothing short of a miracle that the Titan’s structure, as shoddy as it was, somehow held up for 20-plus dives as it internally deteriorated. Furthermore, such pressure would pulverize the occupants’ bodies to dust, as it did for the Titanic ship’s passengers, so recovery of their bodies is all but impossible.

With the dust settling, lawsuits will inevitably be filed against OceanGate, though it may be hard for the families of the Titan tragedy to seek accountability and/or compensation, as all who boarded the Titan had signed a legal waiver stating they fully accepted the risks involved.

Final Thoughts

Water pressure - especially of the aforementioned levels - is not something to screw around with. There’s no room for shortcuts of any kind. The fault of this tragedy is clear and concise: Stockton Rush and his engineering team cut corners and deliberately ignored warnings from marine professionals regarding the structural integrity and mechanical reliability of their aquatic developments. The desire and ego for being innovative and groundbreaking surpassed and overshadowed their wisdom to put every stage of their submersible development through a full range of tests, let alone oversight when designing the shape and form of their submersibles to begin with.

Deep-sea diving, regardless of intent, is incredibly dangerous on all fronts. It still baffles me how there does not exist a United States or Canadian law, let alone an international law, to strictly regulate and oversee the production and usage of any ocean-going submersible within a country’s waters. The safety of ocean-lovers, shipwreck enthusiasts, and marine biologists alike can only be truly guaranteed with a set of firm engineering standards and federal law applied to all who dare to build submersibles for the uncharted depths, so that the reckless actions of Rush and his team are never repeated again.

"If I were to get us stuck and was unable to free the sub, we would become a bit of Titanic history ourselves." - Will Sellers, former Alvin submersible pilot

May the souls of Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Suleyman Dawood, and Paul-Henru Nargeolet rest in peace.

Sources

Holly Honderich, C. M. & J. C. (2023, June 25). Titanic sub firm: A Maverick, rule-breaking founder and a tragic end. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66014565

Cooke, R. (2023, June 21). Marine group says 10 subs in the world can dive to Titanic depths. Titan is the only one not certified | CBC News. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/oceangate-warned-2018-david-lochridge-1.6883432

Boyle, A. (2016, December 10). Oceangate starts building submersible craft that can take crews 13,000 feet deep. GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2016/oceangate-submersible-cyclops-2-construction/

Finley, B. (2023, June 24). Titan sub disaster brings focus on murky regulations of deep-sea exploring - national. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/9788471/titan-sub-implosion-deep-sea-regulations/

Pratt, M. (2023, June 23). How the unconventional design of the Titan sub may have destined it for disaster. WSPA 7NEWS. https://www.wspa.com/news/national/ap-us-news/scrutiny-rises-on-titan-subs-unconventional-design-after-deep-water-disaster/

Chang, C. (2023, June 21). The Murky Regulations Governing Submersibles. Curbed. https://www.curbed.com/2023/06/oceangate-titan-submarine-unregulated-tourism.html

Additional

You can also read this on my website.

“I identify as ____________”

“My persona is _______________”

“ _______________ is a ___________ and she’s my alter ego”

Based on the statements and the way they are delivered, it can be easy to negatively categorize, belittle, and verbally shred these people up. It should also be noted that often media corporations tend to do the talking on behalf of these people - and even when they are included, the magic of contextual editing can forcefully take control of your mind’s steering wheel - without you even realizing it.

What it really comes down to is the way certain words are used. Let’s return to the gold standard that is the English dictionary:

👉 persona: a character assumed by an author in a written work, or the personality that a person projects in public

👉 identity: distinguishing character or personality of an individual, or the relation established by psychological identification. Also “sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing”.

A major part of being an active member of a fandom is creating your own original characters (called OCs for short, or personas), and sometimes dressing up as them. So often when people in a fandom say “I identify as character name” or any of the aforementioned statements, it’s kind of a misnomer. What it really means is the temporary and conscious mental shift into the role of the OC - sometimes referred to as “headspace”. It’s pure acting and is not meant to be taken seriously. Admittedly, some people take things to the extreme, and it can be hard to determine if they have actually become mentally delusional or are just playing you up. This is a world of attention-grabbing, after all (not to say everyone makes that their sole goal).

In essence, an OC or persona is just a character whom its maker assumes the role of in acting via various forms - cosplay, stories, or art. Very often these OCs are of a non-human form (in the physical sense). A big factor is how non-human characters are depicted in entertainment, which then influences young fans of said entertainment to make their own characters with personality traits they intimately gravitate towards. This can only emphasize the misconception that these people identify as non-human.

Escapism is also a factor. Life is unfair, stressful, problematic, and chaotic. Slipping into the mental and physical space of these OCs provides a blissful escape from existing (and often past) pain and even trauma - a coping mechanism, if you will. Taking on the role of an OC’s persona can also be a method to cope with social anxiety or self-image insecurity.

The tragedy is that some self-proclaimed “truth-fighters” and “intellectuals” believe this is all a slippery slope of delusion and even mental illness, and they are fearless in their acts of verbally chewing up innocent creative young women and men, spitting them back out into the sewer with a euphoric feeling of moral superiority. Yet they turn around and enjoy watching movies like Zootopia, completely forgetting that there are adults like them who have an imagination and got hired at animation studios because of said imagination, thus allowing the very movie they are watching to become a reality.

I believe the positive conclusion to draw from this is threefold: that the vast majority of young adults who create their own unique characters that they express through various formats are, in fact, not mentally screwed up, and that they are fully functional, non-narcissistic members of society with jobs and consistent tax payments; that having a creative imagination by which you write stories, sew costumes, or make art as an adult should not be something to frown upon or shame others for; and lastly, that the media is ever-powerful over how you perceive communities, and thus direct conversations with people combined with sound independent research is the best way to enrich your mind and heart on the journey of understanding and exploring the world.

You can also read this on my website.

We all know the fundamental reality: we will die one day and no one knows when or how that will occur. Death of someone whom we considered very close to us - either through being of family or friend relations, or admiration of a famous figure via their looks, positive behavior and actions (celebrity actor, musician, politician, whoever) - does contain heavy agony. The challenge is to maintain a healthy level of sorrowful grievance without falling into emotional instability and madness. Having such levels of instability will inevitably lead us to self-destruction. We will be stuck in a constant state of sadness and depression due to refusal of acceptance of reality - those whom we loved are now dead. Their time of living is up, and those that are still living must continue on with the remaining time in their own lives.

This internal denial comes from a corrupted, obsessive love we have for those people who have passed on. That love is so strong, we let it consume and corrupt us that we hold on to the person, instead of their actions. Most of this love comes from the good, positive actions that those people whom we love and admire did. So it only makes logical sense to honor them and simultaneously move on from their passing by continuing the same positive efforts they did. However, our intentions should not be directly linked to them, but rather to what we know and believe are the outcomes of the effort. In this way we avoid falling down the slippery slope of remembering the person and restarting the cycle of sorrow.

From a religious perspective, moving on after death is very important because the aforementioned obsessive love causes us to slide down a slippery slope to polytheism. Constant remembrance leads us to believe that person did so much good they should be remembered for all of time. So we put up tributes and memorials. We hold a scared day to celebrate the anniversary of the day they did something great or the day of their passing. We name things in their honor. We carve and set up statues of them. Inevitably, we convince ourselves, with the urge and misguidance of Satan, that they are the only source of goodness and well-being. Lo and behold, idolatry ensues as we abandon belief in a God, and replace Him with that beloved person who died.

Such are the dangers of remembrance. We must be careful not to let our desires of love for people corrupt our principles and values such that we head towards idolatry and depression.

You can also read this on my website.

It was from watching that movie that my love and admiration of dolphins grew. I liked a lot of other animals, but dolphins became the primary focus, almost to the point of obsession. It might seem odd to have such a strong connection to a wild marine animal from a movie, but that's exactly my focus: Winter had an amazing influence on millions of people of all ages and genders across the world - especially to those who also had physical disabilities like her. Naturally, we relate to others who are undergoing similar or equal struggles on a personal level; a strong sense of love and comfort through a personal connection. We get a sense of relatability and love, sympathy, leading to feeling empowered and having comfort that "Hey, I'm not alone, there are others who understand and love and respect me because they are in the same struggle too." As such, this connection leads to a moment of therapy for the disabled person.

Animals are unique in this regard, because they don't have the ability to exhibit negative or hypocritical behavior unexpectedly or without a logical cause which directly relates to their natural instincts. They don't judge, they are instinctual, and they display wonder and fascination in an endearing way, making them ideal candidates for providing therapy and connections to disabled people - especially children.

Here are two excerpts from a news article I read on that day:

Joey Gillespie has known he wanted to be a marine biologist since he was 3, but that still didn’t make it easy for him to visit the Clearwater Marine Aquarium as a kid.

As someone with high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome, he can struggle in situations with lots of people or noise — the perfect descriptors for the tourist-filled viewing area in front of Winter the dolphin’s tank. But when he saw Winter in 2015, the then-10-year-old locked eyes with her, and said they kept constant eye contact for 20 minutes.

“Winter gave me the confidence to do things I don’t usually do, and just enjoy life,” said Gillespie, who lives in Valrico and is now 17. He said Winter made him feel understood and hopeful for the first time.

He became more outgoing, giving class presentations and even going up to strangers to tell them about the horrors of shark-finning and other oceanic topics. Doctors had warned his mother not to expect him to pass ninth grade. He’s now preparing to go to college. He’s been working to earn his scuba certification, so he could dive with Winter.

Then the family saw the news that she had died.

“He’s proven everybody wrong,” Gillespie’s mother, Ariel Raymond, said Friday through tears. “I owe that to Winter.”

Aidan Schmitz of St. Petersburg has been regularly visiting Winter since she was young. She was born with only one bone in her left lower leg, causing it to be amputated when she was a toddler.

As a kid, her amputation made her feel constantly alone. Then she met Winter.

“If Winter can get a prosthetic tail and swim around just like the other dolphins,” Schmitz thought, “I can stand and walk around like any other kid can.”

When one reflects, the only logical route leads to that there must be something greater that gives these animals such qualities and creates such connections, and also causes them to die in ways we cannot precisely predetermine. In the Qur'an, Allah states:

"Among His signs is the creation of Heaven and Earth, as well as any animals He has propagated in either of them. He is capable of gathering them whenever He wishes." (Chapter 42, Verse 29)

"And whatsoever He has created for you on the earth of varying colors [and qualities from vegetation and fruits (botanical life) and from animals (zoological life)]. Verily! In this is a sign for people who remember." (Chapter 16, Verse 13)

"And the stupor of death will come in truth: 'This is what you have been avoiding!'" (Chapter 50, Verse 19)

"…And that it is He who causes death and gives life." (Chapter 53, Verse 44)

Cover image © Clearwater Marine Aquarium

You can also read this on my website.

Unicorns are creatures of fantasy (obviously), so let's explore what "magical" means. For something to be magical, it doesn't necessarily constitute having a pot of some witch's brew or holding a powerful amulet. It can be almost anything within imagination that brings benefit (in the form of joy, adventure, wishes, etc.) whilst being outside the realm of reality. When we look at the base animal for a unicorn - a horse - that carries its own appeal too, whether in biological physical structure or in a smaller, cartoon-style form. Think back to the last time you watched a video of horses in action - grazing quietly, grooming each other, or happily running free in a large field. What feelings arose in your heart? Often those can be summed up into a few key words:

Power, Grace, Beauty, Love, Nurture, Care, Wild, Free.

Hence, these same attributes can be found in unicorns, with the horn adding an additional key word: Mystery. Creatures of our imagination are beyond the understanding within reality, so they automatically hold an aura of wonder and mystery, even as the add-ons that make them exhibit said qualities are produced by our own imagination. From an adult-level of thinking, a dozen critical questions will arise, but in the mind of a child, wonder and mystery surrounding a creature of fantasy only fuels the joy of finding something unique and special. And this also ties into self-acceptance, because part of the joy of imagining and believing in a fantasy creature is meeting it with the hope of both sides recognizing each other as someone special, beautiful, unique, and loved for being as such - thereby comes the arrival of the final key word: Friendship.

Dreaming with inner belief is at the core of imagination. Part of having something manifest itself in the mind as being real is believing in its existence initially. Once you have manifest the form of the fantasy being in your imaginative spiritual realm, then the ability to envision other changes and add-ons is boundless. You can make the horn a certain length, have intricate patterns on it, make it shoot laser beams of magic, add a pair of wings… the list goes on forever.

Kids are innocently imaginative, and through dreaming in a fantasy realm, they find creatures of myth and legend, which provide solace, joy, hope, comfort, and love.

You can also read this on my website.