The ABC evening news always ends with something positive or uplifting. I love that about the broadcast. But this evening I have no idea what that snippet of good news was. Between Afghanistan and Haiti, and the Delta variant and its companion foolishness vis a vis some of the responses by people who don't seem to get that there's a global pandemic going on that's stressing the hospital systems and sickening and killing people, and spreading like wild fire again, I'm burned out around hearing what's going on in the world. It's definitely lowering my happiness quotient.
I'm not sure it's good for us to have a steady diet of all the world's suffering. I'm certainly not suggesting that we ignore what's going on around us. But there comes a point when we become saturated and we need to step away. I think of the mass of crowds that Jesus healed and attended to during his life, and his need to step away from time to time to recollect himself before meeting the vast human need that called to him. That facet of the stories has always captured my attention. The wisdom of not allowing ourselves to be devoured.
FB recently changed how pages work on its platform. My author page, Awakened Spirit, now has its own newsfeed in addition to its main page. I haven't spent a lot of time there, but one thing I've noticed is that there is nothing from the Washington Post or the New York Times or The Guardian or any other news outlet. It's all love and light. I'm thinking I might spend a little time there over the next couple of days, or put my nose into a new book I bought the other day, one that I've wanted to get for a long time but did not come across in the bookstore until recently. Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee. She's got the best Ted Talk I've ever seen. And she thinks like I do -- captured by the book's subtitle ~
The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.
This may be the best place to be over the next few days, among the small things in life that offer big returns on that investment of time.
A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.
Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment