As the "end of the world" descends upon us, I have begun dreading the morning papers. Every day brings stories of inhumanity and mayhem to my doorstep. You cannot avoid it anywhere, at the workplace, on social media or at the bus stop. It would appear that we have lost all perspective on what is normal and healthy and what is insane and sick. How do we keep the faith - in our society, in our governance, in our selves, in such times? |
| Image from NBC website (msnbc.com) |
It is my privilege to share with you a post attempting to answer this question written for Subho's Jejune Diet by Aarathi Selvan. A practitioner of holistic psychotherapy, Aarathi is also a "mommy blogger" at Between Life's Doings, one of the nicest blogs on mindfulness I have ever read. Over to +Aarathi Selvan *****
I live with the fact that the mental health services provided at my place of work can be against my philosophy of care. I also live with the reality of leaving my little one at home in the care of others who absolutely love her, while I work towards a better world for myself and others, and yet at the same time yearn for and miss her. I live with the knowledge that small children are shot dead and slit open in schools around the world. In a world that may look like it is going to pieces every day, in a life which seems to have more downs than ups, finding sanity, grace and peace seem like such an effort.
And an effort it is, to find peace, sanity and grace amidst life�s difficulties. Evolutionary psychologists will tell you that we are wired to look out for what is wrong in a situation rather than what is going well. Our survival depends of making sure that we scan for negative things in our circumstances. It is but natural to have that bent of mind then, to look at and focus on the negative side of life and life situation. However, Buddhist psychology seems to gently put our fears to rest. In the words of the
Pema Chodron, this negative view of the world is merely "an innocent misunderstanding that we all share, something that can be turned around, corrected, and seen through, as if we were in a dark room and someone showed us where the light switch was."
The route to action, the route to looking at life with a balanced view, the way to look at my own circumstance without being bogged down by all that is negative around me, the way for me is through gratitude. Being grateful for the good in my life and being grateful for the difficult, miserable and hard things in my life. Gratitude helps me look back with a realistic lens that both good and bad have happened in my life, and I was able to find the �good� (e.g. My strengths as well as others�) within the �bad�. Gratitude also helps me look at right now with a view of mindful awareness of the �good� and �bad� in my situation.
Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology swears by gratitude as one of the most important tools to develop a happy life and to beat depression and anxiety, two of the oft occurring mental illnesses in the world.
Gratitude is a daily practice of being thankful for the gifts of life, for being thankful for both joys and sorrow that make us fully human. When you start a gratitude practice, the key is to partake in it every evening for two weeks at least (you will eventually get hooked). It is important to stick to it in order to gradually change the way our mind is bent towards focusing on the negative.
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