Column: Win your peace with backyard victories during interesting times
Nancy Turner
By Nancy Turner
The Dalles, Ore., Feb. 5, 2025 — The Dalles movie theater recently closed.
JoAnn Fabrics filed for bankruptcy in January.
In March Staples is leaving.
What will we have left in our town but a few restaurants and lots of banks and bars? Good grief, this is worrisome.
I also worry about the economy, the condition of our schools and medical care, and whether or not our friends or neighbors might be deported.
In other parts of the country there are disastrous fires and floods. Around the world, wars, starvation, mass migrations, and epidemics are relentless. Paying attention to all of this is stressful and can be overwhelming.
Stress isn’t just mental. It causes symptoms such as increased heart rate, anxiety, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, headaches, dizziness, and irritability. Any of this sound familiar?
How are we stay to connected and aware of what’s going on in the world and, at the same time, not go crazy? How is one to keep informed and not trip into fear or anger?
The challenge is to maintain a sense of what is right or wrong, yet not to the point where we judge others. This only leads to a sense of “us” verses “them,” which risks alienation and isolation. How am I to stay informed about local losses and international tragedies and at the same time focus on the goodness of people?
Sometimes it seems impossible.
One way to cope is to withdraw for a while, give ourselves a chance to refresh. Turn off the news for a few days. For a bit, ignore the violence and shortcomings we see everywhere. Take an R&R. This doesn’t mean a permanent withdrawal from reality. It means to take time to restore, regenerate, recover.
As much as possible, counteract the negative with something positive. According to relationship researcher, John Gottman, it takes five positive statements to outweigh one negative statement. He’s referring to comments between people, but I think the same holds true within our own selves. If I watch a house burning in California and feel awful about it, I will need to watch five funny cat videos to break even. To lift my spirits, I’ve signed up for a free daily message from “Reasons to be Cheerful” and “Nice News.”
Merely reading the titles shifts my brain into a positive mode. (Google these to sign up) One of the greatest wealths is peace of mind. We have to work at it.
The key is to move from inertia to the empowerment of participation. It’s one thing to change our internal attitudes, to think more positively, with less angst. To go to a whole new level of equanimity it takes action.
At this very moment my neighbor Heather is searching behind our houses for a scruffy cat with a broken front leg. Two days ago the friendly cat, clearly not feral, showed up by her front door. Heather didn’t have a crate to put it in. I took one over, and we agreed to split the vet bill. By then the cat had disappeared. Today the cat was spotted in the alley, but now we can’t find it. It’s freezing outside. We keep looking.
Searching for a crippled cat in the alley isn’t the same as rescuing busloads of displaced pets in Los Angeles, but it’s better than doing nothing. We do what we can. Action overrides a sense of futility.
In spite of my best efforts to maintain a cheerful outlook, my heart often contracts when I watch the news. I feel sadness, frustration and sometimes outrage. These feelings sometimes keep me awake at night. The opposite of this concern for others is indifference. If you find yourself thinking, “Oh, that’s just the way it is and there’s nothing I can do about it,” you’ll feel worse. Don’t let yourself go down that rabbit hole. It’s time for a change.
I can’t pretend I’m not worried. When I hear our leaders saying things I don’t agree with, it’s tempting to close myself off and hide away somewhere, maybe on an island in the South Pacific. I’m scared about the increasing price of food. Should I start raising chickens? If I go numb and don’t allow myself to have feelings, I also don’t allow beauty, goodness, and joy. My challenge is to care deeply and guard against becoming cynical.
What about when I feel overwhelmed? I can’t always rescue a cat in order to rescue myself. The best I can do is take it slow. I make changes in little increments. This might mean going for a walk instead of listening to the news. When a neighbor came by asking for a donation to the Special Olympics, I gave generously because it made me feel good.
Look at the outpouring of help for the families who lost their homes in the California fires. Firefighters from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere went to help. Many, many people sent money and supplies for the homeless. This is what I need to focus on. The goodness of others. We all value peace, safety, and kindness. To avoid despair, this is what we need to remind ourselves. There is a lot of goodness in the world, though most of it doesn’t get reported in the news.
Once there was a Zen student on his way to the monastery. The young student saw a destitute family and felt a moment of sadness. Then he reflected that this was just their karma, their fate based on their past actions, and there was nothing he could do. He told the abbot at the monastery of his sadness and his thoughts of how their karma led to their unfortunate situation. The abbot answered, “How do you know it’s not your karma to aid them?”
When we feel disconnected or hopeless about making a difference, this is the time to step closer. Let your heart quiver in resonance with the suffering. When overloaded, take a break. This movement back and forth between being involved and being withdrawn allows us, ultimately, to stay involved. It’s a way to cope and not burn out or become numb.
Another way to deal with the violence in the world is to consider the bigger picture. We can’t know from our limited vantage point what the unfolding means. When we read about something awful, or something heartwarming, either way, we can’t really know the final outcome. With the internet come many distortions of the truth, and at the same time the internet exposes what is going on. For better or worse, people are watching and people are communicating with each other, all over the planet.
Many philosophers have written about how to avoid getting depressed by depressing situations. As Peter Russell, an optimistic visionary, stated in his video called The Global Brain, “In order for the light to truly shine, the dark has to be seen. We need to witness confusion, the forces of greed, hatred and delusion, in order to have true awakening.
There appears to be an evolution of consciousness. Instant information creates a global village, so we cannot know the outcome.”
The Dali Llama said, “the whole world might fall apart, but if you know you have done the best you can, you will have a feeling of wholeness.”
This reminds me of a story I heard from a man who walked along a beach where thousands of starfish had washed up on the shore. They were slowly dying. He came across a man picking up individual starfish, one by one, and tossing them back into the ocean.
The guy telling the story asked, “Why do you bother? There are thousands. You can’t save them all.”
The starfish rescuer held up a starfish and smiled. “But to this one, what I’m doing means the world.”
I recently offered to teach someone how to meditate. I told him my teaching was free. His response was, “OK, then I’ll pay it forward.” That’s how most people respond to generosity. It’s natural to pass it along. Caring for others is contagious. It’s a powerful antidote to greed and creates a sense of wellbeing. It’s a sure way to send the blues packing.
My neighbor Heather and I know there are abandoned, desperate animals in Gaza and Ukraine. This breaks our hearts and makes us weep. No amount of emotional distress will help those poor cats and dogs, and the families they used to belong to. We might as well stop fretting. What we can do is look in our own backyards. It’s good to know we are doing something, no matter how small, to alleviate suffering. My motto: cry globally, act locally.
