I'm feeling especially grateful today.
I enjoyed my art students presentations yesterday. Their enthusiasm is inspiring. They're all older than I am, and their outlooks on, not just Art, but life, gave me a bit of a boost.
There's so much vying for our attention these days--so many things specifically designed to induce stress, fear, hopelessness, and anxiety. So many are up in arms, fighting, arguing, sniping, threatening, complaining, grumbling, demanding, and yelling. The circumstances and people that have been magnified, are feeding it all.
There are things that others think you should care deeply about, simply because they do. There are causes they think you should rally behind, whether they benefit you or not. There are positions they think you should take, and immediate actions that they think should be your priority. Nope. Secondary worry, and assumed angst, ain't it.
We all went through a global pandemic. I think some people forget that, as they stampede to get back to their chaotic normal, and drag everyone into it. For many, however, opinions have changed, loyalties, too, and priorities have shifted.
All of the unrest and conflict, jockeying for attention, isn't healthy at all. Every day, you're bombarded with unsolicited emails and text messages, that aren't the least bit reassuring. Every day, someone is asking for funds without even considering how people have emerged financially from the pandemic. COVID, unsurprisingly, is still present.
I guess I can understand those who are contemplating relocating to seemingly safer, less politically charged places, and longing for quieter spaces.
Sure, putting one's head in the sand, playing it safe, refusing to hop onto bandwagons, and totally ignoring it all, are always options. It's all you can do to make sure that the unpleasant things that you could get ahead of, and are manageable or preventable, don't go unchecked, and get worse.
The questions are:
What truly deserves my time, attention, and investment?
What's busyness, and what's business?
Do I really have to do anything?
My favorite passage of scripture admonishes us to "Be anxious for nothing". With "nothing meaning "no thing", that pretty much covers everything. Worry simply isn't an option. It's kind of useless. The end of that passage talks about a remarkable peace that can be had, no matter what comes along, intent on scaring the daylights out of you.
Is there nothing on my plate? No. But that "peace that surpasses all understanding" is strangely present today, and again, I'm grateful.
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