I have decided, under trusted advice, to take a break from the news. I am not getting anything but negative emotions out of it, and there's just no safe way for me to take in headlines.
I had balked at this idea before, because at least as of now there is really serious, important shit to be aware of! That said, I have to focus my activism or just humanism in ways that are healthy for me. The person giving the advice asked, "What quantity of alcohol can you safely consume?" The answer being zero, of course, because I have whatever it is that makes me want to get more drunk when I feel the slightest impact of booze, which sets up a feedback loop, unstoppable until I pass out or exhaust the available supply. Apparently non-addicts don't get that. The analogy was clear. I'm also creating a toxic combination when I get involved in political debates or doomscrolling thru Reddit or facebook. I did that today, and I noticed that I felt way worse than when I started, and now I'm trying to step back from that. So, for self-protection, and that of the other people I may lash out of for unrelated reasons, I need to focus on creating peace in what ways I can.
In an earlier post I put somewhere else, i mentioned that it seems to me that practicing meditation is actually the most effective thing I can do. In addition to that, if my meditation results in my cultivation of more peace, then I can serve as a better example to others. I know from experience that people do not change their ideas or behavior by being argued with or lectured. They do so by seeing examples, at least if they are not too fixed in identifying with their ideas about their own self-identity. I looked up to my Aunt for a long time, because I saw from her example that she was living values of kindness and generosity. She was the one my cousins and I could go to when young and overwhelmed at family gatherings, or feeling invisible and left out. She had a way of comforting people and helping them feel seen and heard, because she did see them and hear them. I want to be like that, too, so in her memory I decided that her example would be mine as well. Unfortunately I am more than a little bit anger-prone, which results in my failure to achieve my aspirations when I am upset. This is where meditation comes in. My anger is easier to decouple from lashing out when my practice is consistent in frequency and duration. By the way, frequency is far more important, especially when starting out. Since everyone's actions have ripple effects that move out into the rest of humanity, cultivating personal peacefulness will at least help me not make things worse.
Then, I also imagine the effect if many more people in society practiced meditation... What would happen if we taught all school children to meditate? There are actual sociological experiments on this that resulted in improved behavior in at-risk students attending schools in environments where there is a lot of violence. However, I don't think we'd even need everyone, or even a majority. I think there is a critical mass after which meditation would become the norm, and that's where the cascading effects would really take off.
Just want to emphasize, though, that I am NOT one of the people proposing meditation as some sort of magical cure-all. Meditation will not make you a better person, heal illness, or change any personality characteristics, much to my dismay! It will, however give you a little more distance between your emotions and reactions, such that you can step back before you react and ask whether the impulse is healthy or not. What you do with that distance is then up to you, and that's why the intention or aspiration is so important, too. In my case that has definitely resulted in less regrettable behavior on my part, which leads me to imagine it could help heal the terrible problems in the world today, if we get enough folks on board.
Peace
