Those Moments

There are moments when everything feels overwhelmingly heavy, when there is too much negative energy, too much anger, too much death, too much responsibility, too much to do to make some little space good and right and pleasant. Peaceful. Calm.

I have those moments often when I've spent too much time watching the news and reading FaceBook. It happens when I'm weary and feeling weak. It happens when there is more to be done than I can imagine doing.

And I wonder sometimes how younger people cope these days. I'm in my seventies, retired. I don't have to juggle a job with the other parts of my life. And if it feels like too much to me, how much harder must it be for younger folks with jobs and kids and responsibilities I've outgrown.

I've read that depression in the western world is epidemic. I can easily see how it could be. War, terrorism, school shootings, murder, violence of every kind is in the news constantly. The middle class has less and less financial security. Racial tensions are extremely high. And just about every     "-ism" is alive and well.

And yet, we go on with our lives doing the best we can. And in the darkness of all this we still find hope. Flowers still bloom, the stars still shine, and babies make us smile.

Yes, there are babies being born that will change the world. And we have every hope that they will do better than all of us have done to make the world better.

Nothing is more emotionally healing than holding and infant and watch them smile when you talk to them, when you gently touch their cheek and simply say "Hello, there."

We can find hope in the face of an infant and in the return of the spring blossoms. We can look for positives and make them part of our life-view. We can create hope for ourselves and for other if we live it.

I read today that the hole in the ozone is getting smaller as we live ecologically. I took this to remind me that we can make a positive difference by how we live.

And, you know what? We find what we look for! I remind myself when I feel overwhelmed and seemingly without hope that it is time for me to start looking for positives and to creating positives.

Doing for others give them hope. This in turn somehow gives me hope. It says that I can make a difference, a positive difference.

And so can you.