Now in the darkness
a movement shows
a tiny bloom grows
almost unseen
like inevitable green
pushing through cracks
in the paving stones.
Ruth Appleby 2013
This evening I got off the bus in the depths of despair about the state of the world. Over the last three hours I'd had a three prong attack from three different media sources, all of which suggested that justice is getting more and more distorted and that a lynch-mob attitude to crime is becoming rife. One source was a cynical satirical action film; one, a picture on a social media site (of someone who had been killed for something he'd done - a very gruesome picture which was liked by tens of thousands of people); and one, a few articles in a newspaper (a tabloid (fun fun) with letters and articles calling for more life-sentences and tougher responses to crime). Three sources in the space of a few hours was too much for my fragile structure of positivity and I wallowed in the realisation that we are all doomed to live in a chaotic, hope-starved world where depraved people take justice into their own hands and dance around the corpses of the lynched.... etc etc etc.
Lovely stuff eh?
Well there is a lot of crap in the world, and our media seeks it out. Social media sites make it even easier for a lynch-style-reaction to spark off and spread like wildfire: no one is watching us and we are safe at home - free to sit from our computer-chair thrones and lord it over those who offend us. If we were to judge the state of the world based on what we read in tabloids, see in action films and read on Twitter we could very quickly decide that there is very little reason for joy and hope about the future of our world.
So I'm glad that I caught myself going down that road. I'm very relieved that I remembered that those sources of information are biased and only contain a small amount of the truth which I actually hold to.
That truth that I choose to believe and which I continually experience in my own life is that hope, joy, life, goodness, love and light are all stronger than despair, sadness, death, evil, hate and darkness. The latter six are all real things but they are not more powerful than the first set of things, and should not be allowed to be. If we allow them to be stronger then they will be for a while, but my observation and belief is that the good things in life will almost always find a way to creep back into our hearts and minds. I have time and time again decided that my life is a disaster, that I have messed up too much this time, that I can't imagine feeling happy ever again, that this winter will last forever, that that friendship is ruined, that concrete is taking over our world, that we are all being controlled in ways we can never understand, and so forth. Perhaps I am just a drama-queen (well, I am just a teensy bit), but those thoughts do come to me, even if only for a few seconds, and I imagine I am not alone in that.
It occasionally takes a week, sometimes takes a day or two, more often a few hours, but usually just a matter of minutes, and I find myself coming back to a position of hope, of positivity, of joy of life, of desire for good, and of humour before very long. You might just say that I am an optimist, but I would say that I am actually fairly pessimistic in my outlook on life - sometimes I actually try to stay down in order to prove to others just how rubbish things are, when I've actually already forgotten quite why I felt so terrible. What is good and what is hopeful always seems to win, and that is what I believe for our world too. I believe that good will always, in the end, come through, even if we can't see it yet and even if it takes years or hundreds of years.
Please don't think that I am underestimating how bad situations can really get - how bleak the world can be and just how unfair a series of events can end up. I am also more than aware of the realities of depression and the months or years of darkness that can be brought to a person's life. I know that things are sometimes not how I describe, but I still maintain that the overall picture is one of hope and one of goodness. I want to remember this, believe in it and work for it in order to help propagate it. I am ready to name wrong when I see it and to recognise the frustrations and disappointments of life; but even more I want to see the good and hope that is everywhere and to celebrate it and help it grow.
So that is the frame of mind in which I choose to finish my day. Care to join me?
Yours a-little-more-hopefully,
Blanched Almonds
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