Perhaps the most impressive of these achievements is the amount of information we receive and process on a daily basis. We have something called The Internet to thank for this. It's not hyperbole to claim that we consume more information in a single afternoon than most generations before us did in their lifetimes!
And, it's both a blessing and a curse.
It is a blessing for what should be the obvious reasons: it puts virtually ALL of the world's collective knowledge at our fingertips. Today, there is absolutely NO excuse for willful ignorance. If (and it's a BIG IF) we know how to access this information and view it with an eye towards actual learning and understand instead of mindless acceptance simply because we WANT it to be true, there is NOTHING we can't learn.
However, it is also a curse because THAT much information, especially when so much of it is just blatant crap and lies, can be an assault on the senses with its own corresponding modern day mental disorders.
Having worked as a journalist, mostly in the TV News profession, I have a natural curiosity and healthy desire to KNOW and UNDERSTAND things. So, even in retirement, I find myself as a great consumer of information - ALL kinds of it.
Again, allow me to use my endless supply of hackneyed phrases because, once again: what's good about that is also what's bad. It's two sides of the same coin. It's Yin and Yang.
So I find myself between a rock and a hard place (OMG, I did it again!). I voraciously devour information on a daily basis while at the same time abhor some of the things I read about!
And, it can be overwhelming.
Perhaps what I grapple with most is how vast the range of the human experience is. How can it be that we, as a species are capable of the most sublime thought, the most heartfelt compassion, the most joyful expressions like music and art, selfless acts of giving, a drive to learn and know more, and a desire to simply love and be loved while being the absolute antithesis of everything that I just wrote, i.e. greedy, cruel, willfully ignorant, angry, and loveless. In other words, people suck.
Well, I suppose the best way to deal with the confusion is to acknowledge that THIS is what we are: a complex creature with a range of thought and emotion like no other creature. Yes, other creatures think and feel too, but not with the complexity of the human being.
But, I can't control what others think or feel. Actually, I have no desire to. I have enough on my plate just dealing with my own issues and feelings. So, I control what I can, i.e. my thoughts and then, actions. And, both are more simple to achieve than you can imagine.
First, I've come to learn that I don't have to be everything to everyone. I just have to be myself and trust in the principals I have always held dear - the ones bequeathed me by parents:
- Respect all life.
- Love is always more powerful than hate.
- Be honest.
- Be fearless when you know it's important to be.
- Have integrity.
- Live to learn and learn to live.
- Never raise your fists FIRST in anger.
- Always protect yourself.
- Never touch others without THEIR permission.
- Never let others touch you without YOUR permission.
- Never mark your body or allow others to do so.
- Try to be a good friend.
- Don't judge yourself by the success or failure of others.
- Protect the innocent, even at your own peril.
- Never let anyone deliberately insult you.
- Never deliberately insult others.
- There is no substitute for experience.
- It's OK to fail.
- It's OK to cry.
- What people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is their own business.
- When one door closes, another opens.
- The world owes you nothing!
Look, I don't have ALL the answers. But does anyone? Really? Like virtually all of us, I'm just doing the best that I can to make sense of a world who's very existence came to being in chaos! It can be the way of the world - just don't make it yours.
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