Get On With Life
October 9th, 2006 by Richard CockrumOver the weekend I read the book Wizards at War
…you can pay too much attention to the news. Either they’ll blow up the world, or they won’t. Meantime, our job is to get on with life.
Turn on the television or open a newspaper and you will see the headlines blaring about the latest coup, the latest deaths in a war on the other side of the world, the latest political changes at city hall, the latest murder in another neighborhood. You have to ask yourself, “Does really affect my life?”
It’s easy to get caught up in the world’s events. But all too often, the world’s events are a movie as far as we are concerned. We get emotionally involved. We experience happiness, fear, anger, disgust. But how much of it really matters in our own lives? If TV or newspapers didn’t exist, how would what we see and hear actually affect our own lives? How much of what we see and hear can we personally influence?
Much as many people dislike admitting it, what we see influences our minds. The music we listen to influences our hearts. Making ourselves coarse and miserable by focusing on what is lowest in man will not improve the lot of the world, or further our own growth. Quite the contrary. You give power to what you dwell on.
This isn’t to say that we should pretend that destructive, ignorant events don’t happen. They do. Unless it affects your personal world, though, treat it like a distracting thought in meditation. Acknowledge it, then let it go. Focus on it will only distract you from the purpose of your life.
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October 10th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
It has been said that “No man is an island.” In today’s instant communications and global coverage of news this is even more true than ever before. Events around the globe can and do have a flow-on effect to each of us. Fuel prices are a good example (though I suspect they are much manipulated for greedy gain - at our expense.) Terrorism and changes to air travel is another example.
But you are right when you contend that the vast majority of so-called world changing events don’t really touch our lives in any significant way unless we let them. Too many people get absolutely stressed out by the events of other places that they then can’t cope with even the little annoyances of life which they then blow completely out of proportion.
A favourite saying/philosophy of mine for many years now has been: “It’s not really all that important in the eternal plan of things.”
Goodness - I didn’t mean this comment to become almost as long as the original post!
October 10th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
I had a political blog for a while. The things I write about in this post are some of the reasons why I dropped it. I found myself getting wrapped up in things over which I had little or no control and which didn’t really affect me at all. It reawakened my awareness that the one thing we can, and should change is ourselves, how we act and react. If more people would wake up to what they can do, and stopped worrying about things they can’t directly change, we would be a lot better off.
October 15th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Personal Development Carnival - October 15, 2006
Welcome to the October 15, 2006 edition of the Personal Development Carnival!
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Kevin Harrell presents Quality of Life Killers - and How to Prevent Them posted at Live Longer, Live Better.
Peter Kua presents I’ll only expire at 91… Darn! post…
October 18th, 2006 at 10:30 am
[…] Get On With Life - Another look at the mass media debacle, but I think this comment gets at the core of it: “If more people would wake up to what they can do, and stopped worrying about things they can’t directly change, we would be a lot better off.” […]
August 9th, 2007 at 6:30 am
[…] episode of the Shards of Consciousness podcast is based on an article I wrote in October, 2006 - Get On With Life. A large part of the stress in our lives is caused by focusing on things about which we cannot, or […]