A QUESTION OF DEGREE

On a global scale, what happens to us or with us is incredibly minute; but in our minds it gets blown up out of all proportion. Maybe this is an internal defence mechanism designed over the millennia to keep us (more or less) sane, since over-reacting to things at the global level would soon bring us to the state of gibbering idiots.

And this is where I have a problem; I admit to a tendency to over-react over things about which I can do nothing and which have no direct bearing on my (peculiar) life-style. I would not go as far as to say I exhibit anger since that is a sterile emotion, but I do get “exercised” over what is happening to, say, the Australian coral reefs, to the situation in Libya, to the unnecessary suffering in Africa through the worst drought in 60 years. There is a very old Ottoman proverb that says

“for every gram of good in the world, there are two grams of bad”

This just about sums up my quasi-possessive attitude towards trying to do the best I can; knowing that for every small “good” I do, there are people elsewhere doing twice as much damage. But if I venture too far down that avenue of thought, I would never do anything, so to the greatest extent possible, I aim to ignore the bad – or at least overcome as much as I can.

My unschooled but street-wise grandmother adopted a very pragmatic approach to whatever life threw at her:

“here I suffer grief and pain,

but over the road - it’s just the same”

I think what I am trying to say can be summed up in the excellent words of a colleague:

“the pain in my tooth causes me more problems than all the

evil happening around me… but I try”

As a thinking individual, perhaps you suffer as I, in some way; if that is so, I can understand your predicament and empathise with you. I think that if we can do our “one gram of good” we are at least trying to overcome some of the evil that surrounds us…..

Until next time (with fewer pains),

Peripatetic Scribe