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Flowers on my “false” shamrock plant, a great reminder for me that Spring weather is coming soon, even when there is snow and wintry weather all around me.
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This week, I wanted to focus on finding hope during
challenging times. Like many of
you may experience, the media and many other voices out there are screaming at
us. For the most part, the
messages they are screaming are not positive, nor happy. The focus, more often than not, is
negativity, fear, corruption, anger, mistrust, and destruction. For those of us with sensitive souls,
these constant negative messages can be overwhelming and make us angry. In order to keep ourselves from being
completely depressed, we often just try to tune it all out. We are always trying to “fight” some
evil forces out there that are aimed at destruction, and this can wear us out
on an emotional and spiritual level if we let it.
There is only so much negativity that the human soul can take,
really.
While there are plenty of terrible things going on in the
world (and some of them certainly do need to be addressed, such as issues of
social injustice, poverty, and environmental degradation), I believe that there
are better ways to approach these issues, and still maintain your sanity and
balance. This is a journey that I
am on myself, and I believe that you can be on the same journey as well.
First of all, we must
recognize that with every situation that we face, we can make a choice with how we are going to react and what we
will focus on. More often than
not, many of us are on emotional autopilot, and our negative emotions far too
often control us. The key here is to
become self-aware as to how we are reacting to a given situation, and to decide
whether or not this negative reaction is worth our energy and our time. Is it really as big a deal as it
seems? Are we just running on an
emotional program that we are used to?
Is there another way to look at this?
Secondly, know that
you can choose your media input. For
sometime now, I have decided to avoid watching the news (although admittedly, I
still probably get way too much negative news from social media sources), since
most of it is very negative, and very biased to the agendas that the networks
want you to know about and think about (not to mention, spend on, with all of those commercials they broadcast). And, at least for those of us in the
United States, this news rarely focuses on much of anything going on outside of
our own country.
Thanks to social media and the internet, we now live in a
world where we can have a lot more access to what’s going on just about
anywhere in the world, so that we can be more informed citizens of Earth, and
learn about things that are making a positive impact. I want to encourage you to explore other avenues to get your
news outside of all of the typical networks, and to focus on the wonderful, empowering,
and positive things that are going on out there.
I do believe that it is still important to be informed about
what is going on in your community, but perhaps there are other ways to get
that same information with a far less biased agenda. Of course, every news source probably has some sort of
agenda, but at least you can get a more balanced point of view if you are
aren’t reliant upon one single news source telling you what you should think.
Third, yes, there are
many bad things going on in the world, but there are also plenty of good things
going on too. Abundant things… Resilient things... It’s all about what you choose to focus
on. What if the nightly news
reported many more good things going
on in our communities than bad things?
What if they told you more stories about people starting community gardens,
helping the homeless, developing resilient local economies, and alternative
green forms of energy, instead of all of the horrible things that happened that
day? It might inspire us to be
more positive, loving, and trusting toward our fellow human beings, and know
that we personally can make an impact.
Fourth, all one needs to
do is to look at nature to know that life is resilient. There is hope. For a brief moment, think about all of
the environmental disturbance and human construction that we’ve built up during
our recent human history. Although
there is still a lot of destruction that does exist, nature is always looking
to find some way to help heal the land with whatever resources that are at
hand. This can even come in the
form of weeds that are taking advantage of the new environment that is now open
for them to grow in. Many of these
“weeds” are helping to hold the soil in place and prevent erosion, bring up
nutrients and restore the soil, and in many cases are thriving where the
native/non-invasive plant species aren’t doing so well anymore.
I have always been amazed at the power of life that is
contained within a single seed. I
have been reminded of that idea this week, as I have started my first batch of
seeds for the upcoming garden season.
From one tiny seed, a huge plant can grow, and that one plant will produce
many more of its own seeds. This
is a great metaphor for the power that we have as individuals to make a
difference in the world. Every
positive action that we take can have a ripple effect, and it can have a
positive impact on many other people.
How we choose to spend our money or not
to spend our money, the food that we choose to eat, if we choose to garden
and our gardening methods, the values that we pass on to our children, the
words that we say, the prayers we pray, and so much more, can have positive
impacts on the world, even on future generations. The skills that you learn and when you start making things
yourself can also empower you in your own life, and you can then help to empower
others as you learn more and can teach them those skills. This
is powerful, and this is very hopeful.
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