For a while today I found myself worrying and stressing over our world situation, all the conflicts happening, the uncertainty, climate change through global warming, North Korea becoming increasingly belligerent over their developing nuclear arsenal, the possibility of Donald Trump as the next US president, Isis in the Middle East, poverty, food insecurity, escalating housing and food costs, homelessness and criminally-low and stagnant wages here in Canada, one of the world's really wealthy nations, the unstoppable arrogance of the One Percent, but for the recently leaked Panama Papers, and on it goes. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
Are things any less safe or more uncertain than they used to be? Well, we did survive World War II but then the alarm was sounded in the fifties about possible nuclear annihilation, in the sixties about environmental pollution, in the seventies came our first taste of global terrorism, with the Grey Wolves and the Red Brigade and the PLO, in the eighties the ozone layer was about to dissolve leaving us to fry to death as the earth morphed into a gigantic microwave oven, in the nineties it was determined that global warming caused by human activities would bring on the apocalypse and now in the early Twenty-First Century we are all paralyzed by fear. The gulf between rich and poor grows ever wider in the affluent west. In other countries they say that the middle class is growing but last I heard, Carlos Eslim, the world's wealthiest billionaire is still living in one of those emerging economies, Mexico.
I am going to suggest here that it is a moot point that things are really all that much worse here on Planet Earth. In some ways they could even be a bit better than ever, if we can make it through climate change from global warming, that is. I think that the real problem is to be found in three little words: Too Much Information.
We are the most connected and informed generation ever in World history. Thanks to internet technology we will know within a nanosecond everything that is happening on the other side of the world. A generation ago we had just TV and radio to rely on and they were also pretty fast but still moved at a snail's pace by comparison. Three generations ago it was telegraph. Six generations ago they had to wait for the mail to arrive by steamship. Ten generations ago they had to wait for the mail to arrive by frigate. Our species has occupied this earth for some one hundred and fifty thousand years. Twelve thousand years ago we invented agriculture and then we slowly became civilized. In the past twenty years we have had home internet and all the instantaneous news to frighten, terrify and paralyze us.
Is the world really going to hell in a hand basket? To quote the Great Bugs Bunny, "Nyaah...Could be." Or maybe not. I think we have just become so oversaturated with news as passive recipients that many of us have come to feel like vulnerable helpless victims unable to do a blessed thing to improve or change things. And who can enjoy the present moment and the daily mundane joys of life without feeling guilty, or really, with all this anxiety and fear, who can enjoy anything at all? Yet, the real secret of coping isn't by trying to change the world but in letting ourselves enjoy the present mundane moment. In Buddhist Babble it is called "Mindfulness". Whatever you want to call it, it works. The taste of good food, the presence of a friend, of a loved one, a walk in the forest, in a park or on the beach, a nap, writing a poem, singing, drawing or painting, playing an instrument, being kind, especially being kind to strangers, laughter and humour. All these little acts of enjoyment, creativity, and generosity might not solve the world's problems, but maybe they will. As we slow down, calm down, enjoy the gift of the present moment and take better care of others and ourselves we are really committing a subversive act. We are disassociating ourselves from the toxic machine and we are creating alternatives and dare I say that we are also creating a community of resistance and change.
One step at a time. And we will do it with joy.
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