The Choice

As I have gotten older, I have begun to feel an obligation to be aware of what is going on in the world. I am an NPR junkie after all! Lately though, the political craziness with the debt ceiling, the bombings around the world, the famine in Africa... all the general discord and strife our media reports on every day has begun to wear on me. I know there are wonderful things that happen all the time and I try to focus on those but with all these other negative things floating around in my head sometimes that is hard.

I have found that I am almost subconsciously making the decision to limit my exposure to the news. I have been listening to more music and when I do listen to NPR, I change the station quickly if they start talking about one of the above topics (and that happens a lot). I am a huge proponent of taking action if something is bothering you and I think that is why hearing about all these things is so hard for me. There is very little I can do to take action and make a change. None of these things are going away anytime soon. What can I do? It is all out of my control.

One morning as I was getting ready for work it came to me. Gandhi's quote, "Be the change you want to see in the world" popped into my head and actually made me stop for a minute. They are such simple words but I suppose I have never really internalized them. I finally realized that the one thing that is completely within my control is my behavior. Instead of letting my frustration in these world events affect my actions or my mood in a negative way, I can make a difference here by always trying to act with positive intention. I like to think I do that anyway, but this realization helped me understand that each of us can make the world - our world - a better place.

This understanding also helped me see that it is not my task in life to fix our political system or stop the bombings in the Middle East. Those challenges are out of my control. There are things that I can do here though. I still don't love hearing about all the problems in the world but my focus is beginning to shift. I am now looking for and choosing activities where I can make a difference here and I feel joy and gratitude in that process. I think those are the emotions that will ultimately help our world and I am very happy to contribute to that cause.