This is a rerun of a post I wrote in January, 2020. I still believe it,
I have learned to read the papers calmly and not to hate the fools I read about.
—Edmund WilsonThis quote tickles me, probably because when I was teaching stress management years ago, I would read the papers in the morning to test how well I was doing. It’s still good practice.
I’ve always been interested in history, so I don’t want to hide and miss seeing it in action, but I agree with Mary Oliver:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world….
Since my teen years I’ve thought of happiness and joy as a way of being defiant, fighting back against all the soul-sucking parts of life. It beats feeling helpless and angry or depressed.
Do you agree with this? Do you think it’s even more true today?
December 6, 2021
YES! I agree with you.
they only can take your joy for living if you Let them!
🙂
I do agree! These days it seems joy is even harder to find though.
It is more work now, that’s why it’s important to value it.
I am not the person to ask this…LOL That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
🙂
Yes, I agree. You’ve gotta grab a hold of joy where you can find it. There is too much in life that tries to drag you down.
It’s well worth the effort. 🙂
I agree, and I do.
🙂
i grab my joy from my sweet Beau. I am sitting here reading your post feeling Joy because he is sitting on the sofa like a sentry dog, staring into space and making my heart sing. he is indeed by therapy dog although not an official therapist… mostly the news of our world makes me sad, not angry or depressed, just sad. I watched with a sad heart this morning as they showed the Southern Sudan completely under water, their homes, their crops and the children and families wading for days to find dry land are emaciated from living such a hard life. I try to remind myself, this has been going on since the beginning of the world, it still leaves me sad.
I know. And it’s going to get a lot worse. I wrestled with this when I was in high school, that’s when I became a tragic optimist.
Bless Beau, and you!
That’s such a clever strategy! Certainly, something to strive for.
🙂
I’m still at “work in progress” but as some of you know I’m quite excited at the moment that a proportion of my health woes might be history. Especially since I took a leaf as such out of Jean’s book and spent most of Sunday “nutting out where certain health professionals” may have gone wrong. And it paid of big time with my new wonderful GP, who fell into my hands when my now “deleted GP” was on holiday.
On Monday arvo, when I was in a phone consult with her, I “ran my findings” past her, I had no dates but it seems I got it right and the “deleted GP” did not. I’m now on a new program to see if my body and me can be in balance.
Touch wood it seems to be… Still need to do make some changes but am not having the “allergy type symptoms” …
In case it was not “reading the news” more “reading me” 🙂
Good for you! And I’m so glad you have a good GP now.
Edmund Wilson has the right idea. I read the media avidly but I don’t get worked up over the latest plethora of horror stories. Yes, they’re shocking, but there’s nothing I can personally do about them, so why not just stay calm and move on? And no, I don’t hate fools, I just wonder why they think the way they do.