being a light for ourselves … and others

Writing in yesterday’s New York Times, Mary Pipher reflects on a “world pommeled with misfortune” and proposes ways of balancing despair with joy.*

Credit: CNN

The mornings are dark, the late afternoons are dusky, and before we finish making dinner, the daylight is gone. As we approach the darkest days of the year, we’re confronted with the darkness of wars, a dysfunctional government, fentanyl deaths, mass shootings and reports of refugees crawling through the Darién Gap or floundering in small boats in the Mediterranean. And we cannot avoid the tragedy of climate change with its droughts, floods, fires and hurricanes. Indeed, the world is pummeled with misfortune.

We can count ourselves lucky if we do not live in a war zone or a place without food or drinking water, but we read the news. We see the disasters on our screens. Ukraine, Israel and Gaza are all inside us. If we are empathic and awake, we share the pain of all the world’s tragedies in our bodies and in our souls. We cannot and should not try to block out those feelings of pain. When we try, we are kept from feeling much of anything, even love and joy. We cannot deny reality, but we can control how much we take in.

I am in the last decades of life and . . . click here to read the essay in full.

* Dr. Pipher is a clinical psychologist in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the author, most recently, of “A life in light: Meditations on impermanence.”