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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Calling someone says “You matter” – it’s chicken soup for the soul. And the other side of the same coin is that “I care”.
In a world that feels like it’s rapidly spinning out of control, what people have the most need for, what they crave, is honest human connection.
There is too much suffering and death delivered daily in the nightly news, on the internet, at the movies and from our favorite TV shows.
Personal humanity means we cannot deny its intensity. Even when it is not connected to people in our immediate circle, we still feel the pain. We still experience grief.
And just because it may not be our friends and loved ones being maimed and murdered, we cannot deny our vicarious suffering, we cannot deny our own feelings without further damaging our psyches.
Add to that the anxieties of modern society, amplified first by the echo chambers of social media and now by an array of evil buffoons posing as leaders, from the White House to Putin’s Palace.
Our empathy with the terror of those demonized by Trump and exported to the hellholes of South Sudan and prisons in El Salvador, and the fears of their families.
The day-to-day horror of living in Ukraine or Gaza never knowing if the next bomb to fall will be the last thing you hear.
The existential loss of a safe future for our children with the acceleration of climate change while government-supported multinationals stay intent on speeding it up for their short-term profit.
With the exponential rise of artificial intelligence combined with a refusal to regulate it foreseeing the nightmare of a Terminator time to come. Too soon.
What can we do to address this loss of faith and trust in our fellow human beings as well as our elected officials?
What can be done to allay the grief people all over the world are experiencing? What can be done to focus that grief not into anger, not into striking out themselves in retaliatory rage, but to channel it into something constructive, something to help others and mitigate the pain through mitzvahs?
How do we reconcile the competition between burgeoning pro-natalist and anti-natalism forces. The need to breed more babies to provide the economic support for the current generation as it ages. The desire to breed better ones like some eugenicists and the Elon Musk-egotists feel are necessary for improving the quality of the human race.
Meantime, an increasing number of Americans don’t want kids for reasons ranging from the staggeringly selfish to the purely altruistic, from a commitment-phobic fear of having to share anything, even with one’s own child, to saying a child would be another unsupportable burden on the planet’s resources and environment.
The only surcease from this existential angst is to cultivate self-compassion to help cope with life’s struggles.
Not religion. Or at least not one that calls on people to turn their lives over to an unknown and unknowable supreme being and its spokesperson here on earth that, in return for tithing and proselytizing or suicide attacks or self-immolation, will somehow wave a magic wand to give only you and your sect jubilation or pay forward today’s pain for a future Jannah or nirvana.
Compassion and blessings have religious connotations but can still stand apart as personal choices to connect unselfishly with others. So when you reach out it’s not about you, but them.
Furthermore, evidence exists that people who are compassionate towards themselves in times of trouble have more overall resilience, and an advantageous ability to face the future with a smile.
Please, bless yourself by rising above the ordinary to confer happiness and emotional prosperity upon those in your life and beyond. Breathe into that...
Just thinking about it can release tension trapped inside your body, make a profound improvement in your acceptance of the world around you. What you can and cannot control.
By connecting with others, by strengthening the muscles of togetherness over time, we can re-empower ourselves to stand firm against the new McCarthyism that is devouring democracy. By reinforcing our inner integrity, as individuals forged with compassionate and humanitarian vigor, we are all the more impervious to those trying to tear us down. And apart.
Start today by reaching out and invoking care for another by calling or sending a small gift from the heart or otherwise telling them they matter.
Good night… And good luck.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
