The title of this blog post is inspired by a quote from Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, the mystic Muslim Sufi. It has come to mind a lot in the past few months.
I have deliberately not read or listened to the daily news coverage for more than 30 years. I rely on trusted friends and family to share important news with me – news that might affect me, my family, or Pacific Essences, or news which I may be able to actually engage in to alleviate suffering in some way. For example, when we learned about the recent wildfires in California, we immediately prepared small bottles of Balancer Essence and made a donation to those impacted by the fires through Herbalists without Borders.
In the past few months, however, I have been inundated with TMI = Too Much Information. Every time I connect to a browser, there is another outlandish headline demanding my attention. It’s like going to the video arcade and playing Galaga - a very fast video game where your task is to shoot attacking insect aliens out of the sky as they head towards you and your fighter planes. Please don’t ask me how I know that - haha!
Suffice it to say I feel bombarded by information, and mostly information over which I have no control. I imagine I am not alone in this experience.
And the question is – is the information that is blaring from my computer screen and capturing my gaze even accurate? By definition, the word ‘information’ means facts – an accurate account of something or someone. In this moment, what is being presented as fact often seems to be wearing a cloak of hyperbole, sensationalism, or a disorienting disconnect to our lived reality. These headlines both demand our attention, and paralyze our ability to respond from a place of grounded wisdom.
To me, this feels like such a waste of our precious life force energy. And that’s when Rumi’s quote kept getting louder and louder in my head, until one day I decided that I was only going to do things which had the potential to make me joyful. No matter how tempted by those headlines I might be, I was not going to click on stories which seemed designed to draw my attention like the gossip rags at checkout stands at the grocery store. And, if tempted to click on such a story, I am going to engage my own powers of reasoned response to check important facts, especially if it concerns disturbing news.
It is kind of like enacting the principles of the Serenity Prayer, which provides a focal point for Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups:
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Now is the time to centre your trust in your own heart and the signals from your own Body/Mind. All of us recognize feelings of discomfort - whether it is knots in our stomach or a racing heart. At that moment when we recognize a feeling like this, we have the choice to continue reading, or to take a breath, take an Essence, or to remember some loving uplifting experience from our past to restore equilibrium in our Body/Mind and to set about looking for what will bring us our next experience of joy.
Why are these experiences of joy so important, especially in challenging times? Well, I am pretty sure that the more calm and joy we are able to embrace for ourselves, we will discover that we are indeed also creating a positive impact on the world around us.
