> If your life is crap, why would people be friends with you?

Are you saying you can only be friends with successful people (or at least people with non-crap life)? For me, I'm friends with people who are inteligent, open-minded, funny and care about the friendship (so that they prioritize allocating time for it). I don't particularly care if their life is in order; in a way, if it's not and I can help them sort it out, it makes the friendship more meaningful.

The frequency of intersection of events in people’s lives depends on their “success” in life, hence the different “classes” in society. College, graduations, weddings, weekend outings, vacations, golf clubs, gyms, work environments, residential neighborhoods, etc.

It’s harder to meet and befriend people who you aren’t crossing paths with during the course of your life.

This kind of talk makes me happy to live in an european country where people of all walks of life can meet in every street, every gym and almost every neighborhoods.

Where I can have a chat with somebody without having any idea about their "success" and "class".

I wonder how much the "rat race" mindset correlates with depression, anxiety, cynicism...

I live in a rat race city and this mindset really only exists in the less dense areas. Never met anyone when I lived in the dense part of town who would think twice about speaking with me.

>Why take care of your body if your life is crap?

So that your life is less crappy? You've gotta start somewhere, or not at all.

I think your basic point is correct, but misses the whole positive feedback loop part of the equation. You need momentum, which is difficult to get when you're going uphill in first gear, but the only alternatives to trying are accepting a crappy life or ending it, and those don't seem very appealing compared to living a non-crappy life.

Things like this are easy to theorize, but actually taking action when you have no decent paying job (or job at all), no friends, no lovelife, your family is just a bunch of psychos, and you are overall looking very unattractive, is hard. You can maybe start somewhere, but even after losing weight successfully, for example, your life still sucks. Why bother...

Why bother? Because even if your life still sucks it sucks _less_. The unattainability of a perfect life doesn't stop you from making incremental improvements. There's no real reason to do anything, of course. But you're here, living. Yesterday you decided to go to sleep and wake up again today, rather than ending it all. If today was worth living for you, tomorrow probably is too. Could tomorrow be better than today, even a little bit, if you pursued some course of action today? If so, why wouldn't you pursue that course of action? How much would your life improve over the next decade if you spent time incrementally improving it most days?

Fixing all of the problems in your life is probably not possible, but incremental improvements are entirely attainable, and they build up over time. Once you have momentum you can start shifting gears. You lost weight? Well great, now some of those superficial humans might be willing to befriend you...

I think that from a certain point on disease chooses you, no matter how much one tries to “stay healthy” and all the associated tropes.