Hope and Despair

A few days ago I was trying to offer the following advice to one of my daughters as a path to happiness: Let the positive in your life outshine the negative. Indeed, at any given moment, there are things we can focus on that make us feel grateful, proud, hopeful, joyful; and others that make us feel hopeless, horrified, angry, helpless.

I use this a lot in my own life. I have so much to be grateful for in my personal and professional lives, I consider myself truly privileged. And yet there are things I care deeply about such as social and environmental justice or warfare and institutional violence and their devastating impacts on entire generations around the world, and there is seldom much to rejoice about in these domains. These things are so heavy, so fundamental, how can I stand to be happy when our planet is being raped every day in the name of greed, when innocent populations in so many places have to endure the brutality of war and persecution, again in the name of greed, or dogma, or both?

It's a tough balancing act not to fall into apathy and become numb, while not letting a state of permanent outrage completely consume your peace of mind and the joy you can bring to others in their lives.

Yesterday was a good day in several ways. President Obama gave hope to a large number of aspiring American citizens who have lived under the label of 'illegals' because of the way their parents entered the US. France won their soccer match. I got to spend quality time with my teenage daughter. I got to exercise a little even.

But then I learned of a tragic event unfolding in the life of someone I care about. And at that point, it is so hard not to let the despair and hopelessness outsize everything else. In the end, the quality of our lives are defined by our personal relationships. We are social creatures by design. And when tragedy strikes someone  close, we feel it so much more strongly.

Someone wrote recently that if everyone got to personally experience the horror of war, the pain of starvation, the devastation of environmental destruction, we would all be more committed to making these things end. Maybe. In the meantime, I will carry on trying to use all the good in my life as positive energy to deal with that which I want to see change. Knowing that one some days, that balance just can't be achieved.