As the world keeps running sideways a hundred miles an hour, pausing only to take an occasional step backward, digital screens flood crowded global minds with more negative noise than positive. In America, a just announced survey reveals optimism and pessimism are somewhat evenly balanced, a shocking development to hundreds of millions who never dreamed we would live to see such negative malaise.
We find in life what we look for, so half our brethren are looking at everything that’s wrong based on whatever is spit out through a narrow funnel of information sources. There are over a billion websites in the world, yet very few scan more than ninety in any given month. The downside of this is that narrow views create narrow minds; and narrow minds are easier to influence than open ones. Since it is much easier to make someone cry than laugh, negativity stokes emotional reaction (and eyeball time) more than good news. Good news seems a casualty of modern chaos. People don’t seek it, nor embrace it. Fueling the furnace of frustration seems far more popular.
I live at the base of the Rocky Mountains, yet for several weeks could barely see them. Smoke drifting in from western forest fires hazed the majestic peaks beneath a dark cloak of near invisibility. Rivers and reservoirs are dangerously low from record heat without rain. Humans need water, as do fish, insects, vertebrates, and invertebrates. The west has too little. The south and eastern half of the U.S. has too much. Hurricane Ida stormed its way through the Gulf of Mexico and sashayed misery up the eastern seaboard. Today a hurricane is blasting Baja Sur’s Cabo San Lucas — one of my favorite fishing hideaways — and is sure to couple destruction with rivers of mud in its wake. The locals, who rely on tourism for 80 percent of their income and have been barely hanging on due to Covid steamrolling their money crop, will be forced to clean up, bang boards together, and try again to get by on less than little.
Tough times for all, it seems.
Much as the smoke from millions of acres of western forest fire kindling have hidden the pristine wilderness, and storms blast across emerald seas, it’s easy to look up at night and see nothing but darkness.
The stars are there, we just can’t see them. Today is a good day to remind ourselves that all those stars birthed from our lives are still there. They represent the people we’ve met, places we’ve been, and things we have experienced. All these wonderful things are still up there for us to admire. Never doubt it for a moment.
As late Beatle George Harrison said, “Sunrise doesn’t last forever. Sundown doesn’t last forever. They are fleeting. That’s why they’re special.”
Harrison was by far the most introspective thinker of the Fab Four, a man who delved deeply into self-actualization by studying feelings and emotions. Bliss was a zealous curiosity, something George defined as those rare moments in life where every single cell in the body is automatically and fully engaged.
I’ve had a few of those — not many, but a few — and I’m guessing you have too. It warms my heart to search through my mind’s file folders to locate each and think about it; and then express gratitude for the brilliance of the event. Bliss moments connect us to special people, places, and things — the brightest stars of our skies — and, however brief these experiences may have been, they are proof positive that life isn’t just worth living, life has moments when it rockets way beyond wonderful.
If today is a good day to think about the stars in your life, make the time to revisit them at bedtime. Regardless how hidden your stars may seem because of challenges you face, every one of those stars waits faithfully up above, twinkling as brightly as ever, waiting to be seen. They are there. All we have to do is look up and smile.
Best always,
Ocean Palmer