In a world that feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket — and fast — being well might fall right off your list. With all this insanity, what does it matter?
It matters. I know you know it matters. It’s just gets tougher when we get bombarded with hellacious acts by confused people who never learned to love, not destroy.
This stuff stirs up your stress, big time. Gives fear a nice hand up. Blows up anger to massive proportions. And, all of a sudden, you feel like absolute crap.
What to do? Put things back into perspective. Find the love in you, not the fear and/or anger, and exercise that muscle to its max. There is good in the world. There is. It’s just not news. The good that still exists (really, it does) does not discount the terribleness. But it’ll help you focus on what’s still right. Not always on what is so awfully wrong.
Most of you are of better use to the places where you can make a difference — in your family, among your friends, in your community — when you are, one, well, and, two, determined to go out and spread kindness and understanding. That’s what works.
When you do what you need to do to feel well — not like shit from the stress and fear and anger — you can help. You can’t from that other place. You can’t when stress makes you ill. You can’t when you’re angry. You can’t when you’re acting out of fear. That is exactly the point at which the terribleness wins. Because you are now incapacitated … in various ways.
Social media and 24/7 news makes it ridiculously difficult to get a handle on your world. You want to be informed, I get it. But how much of *informed* do you need to be? If, as part of your self care/be well plan, you need to step away from that, then, please, do so. Again, being ill from the stress and more is not going to help anything or anyone. Not you, the people who love you or the bigger world that is enduring some rough times.
I’m not against awareness. Awareness breeds change. And we seem to desperately need that. Then again, we really don’t have any handle on how right the world may be to counter the wrong. How many heroes were there in the world yesterday? How many people did small things with great kindness yesterday? How many humans loved and acted with compassion? How many appreciated their fellow human exactly as he/she/etc. is? We don’t know. It’s not reported.
Tragedy blows. I wish there were none to report. These acts of violence — and other violence-provoking, diabolical, diatribes — contribute not one damn thing to a better place for us all to live.
But my work here is you. The care of you. The foundational support of your well being. And, if that gets knocked out of the picture, it seems to me that tragedy wins. And tragedy should never, ever win.
