I don’t know about you, but my day normally begins with a steaming cup of Cafe du Monde French Roast and a couple of (3) newspapers. Then I do some scanning of the online media world, particularly around food, fauna and travel. My eternal optimist side likes to peak, albeit jadedly, and see if the political and religious pundits and leaders of the world are offering up anything hopeful for the day. This is, of course, after getting a good dose of the vibe from outside – if the air is clear and the barometer high, all the better.
Over the past year I began to sense that reading the newspapers and focusing on mainstream media wasn’t really the best place for me to pick up my vibe (aka positive outlook) about what’s really going on in the world. After I ingested the “news” I found myself with a profound sinking feeling of despair. Had the collective world known as the “news machine” set itself to purposely churn out the worst the world had to offer in the form of political corruption, natural disasters, and the worst portrayals of humanity, was it an unconscious phenomenon, or worse, was it an accurate portrayal of our world? Even the Arts and Food pages were manned, not by observers, musers or commentators, but “critics”, denoting underlying if not direct negativity. If media is the mirror of society and therefore of humanity, that mirror had gone glum, or worse, in my humble opinion. At least one of the papers I read held virtually nothing that could be called even remotely uplifting.
And so, as I drove down the road the other morning, a few thoughts coalesced in that solstice-light-deprived brain of mine. Namely, had I somewhere along the line begun to unconsciously shift my focus to a bonafide re-balancing effort away from the negative? Was I constantly seeking antidotes for today’s news headlines by compulsively snapping pictures of beauty, color, and creative endeavors that I sought specifically to cheer me up and restore my inherent faith in the world? Do humans have their own inherent self-correcting mechanisms, that when faced with the overwhelming bombardment of the dismal, subtly work to change the course and bring the world into a more even-keeled focus? Is this what I have been doing with myself for the past few years? Hmmm. If so, I guess I am glad I have this internal steering mechanism and it’s working.
As I trundled on down the road, I saw, for the first time in awhile, abundant sunshine, brilliant blue skies, green pastures and horses grazing. The tree branches, albeit bare, persisted in their reaching for the heavens. Snowdrop buds, albeit misguidedly, were optimistically poking up through the ground in search of the season to come. There was so much beauty right around me in a matter of seconds, that I was instantly re-invigorated. It was as restorative as one good chortle from listening to the Tappet Brothers on NPR’s Car Talk (my favorite, guaranteed food-for-the-heart and soul – may they never take them off the air!) The headlines of the day, of all the suffering and scandal, receded. It was the natural antidote to what mainstream media presents to us, in steady dose, each day.
While I may have to work at it, and look purposely, there remains beauty and wonder all around us. There are many people who devote themselves daily, either instinctively or purposely, to making the world a beautiful place, through their imagination, inspiration, determination and maybe in some cases their own pathology – their art, design, voice, word, photo, planting, and building – all designed to reflect beauty and not despair. Perhaps I did not realize I had begun this trek to assemble in my consciousness, as much beauty and wonder, in the form of cooking, baking, snapping, planting, traveling, all-around-ingesting and typing as I possibly could, but, upon reflection, I had.
Could there be any more powerful antidote, right at our fingertips? I think not. And so, my resolution for 2015 is to spend less time inhaling the newspapers, tv, radio and online pundits and more time actually seeing past my own nose with a bias of the positive. There is lots of good and beauty out there for the asking. And, yes, I guess we do have to ask.
And so, and naively as this may be, borrowing from Newton’s Third Law, I guess I do subscribe: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – massaged as follows: for every evil there is a good, for every sadness there is a happiness, for every pain there is a joy, for every ugliness there is a beauty, for every hater there is a lover.
Happy 2015 to all! May you have a year filled with beauty and wonder, health and happiness!