Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

I think that many people are having a hard time staying positive in this world of ours today.  After all, we’ve spent almost all of this new millenium suffering a constant bombardment of negative news on a global level, from the wars in Iraq and Africa to the tsunami disaster of a few years ago to the destruction of the World Trade Center and the hijackings of the jets that were used to destroy them, not to mention the murders of the thousands of people in the jets and buildings.  Economically, we’re seeing disasters in the housing markets, the international currency exchange, and the inability of low- and middle-class families to keep up with rising costs because wages aren’t keeping pace with the higher costs of gas, food, travel, and utilities.  More and more people are allowing foreclosures on their homes and seeking bankruptcy protection from the courts, and fewer and fewer people seem to be able to create situations in their lives in which they thrive.

And in the midst of all this doom and gloom, we’re being inundated with books and movies and magazine articles that say our lives are in our own hands, that we can create our own realities and cause our own affluence and wealth.  And somewhere in our subconscious, we have to be asking ourselves, “If this is true, then what about those thousands of civilians who have died in terrorist attacks over the last few years in Iraq and Afghanistan?  How can we say that the hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia and the Sudan who have died in genocidal attacks created their own destiny?  How could the people on the airliners who were involved in the 9/11 attacks have chosen to end their lives this way?  There are thousands of such questions that just don’t seem to fit.

Add to the many problems of the world that we’re witnessing the fact that most people are working harder than ever and bringing home less than ever, and we have situations in which people aren’t able to slow down and take a look at their own lives.  All of the other overwhelming things in life become overwhelming because so many people are unable or unwilling to slow down long enough to let things settle in their minds and hearts, so issue after issue in their personal and public lives starts to build up into a mountain of stress.  Since these issues are never dealt with actively and consciously, they simply pile up and become a monstrous mountain that keeps us from finding the peaceful and loving parts of our lives.

One of the things that I hope to accomplish with this blog is to publish reminders that can be helpful in allowing ourselves to take the time and make the efforts necessary in order to deal with the issues of our lives in positive, constructive ways, as opposed to passively allowing the issues to create stress and tension in our lives.  Nothing changes if we don’t deal with it actively, and it’s important that we deal effectively with all of the inputs of our lives, be they positive and uplifting or negative and potentially debilitating.  The important words there are “we deal.”  And that’s what learning is all about–finding ways to deal with the issues of our lives that will make us healthy, happy, and whole.

And that’s what this Weblog will be all about.