This week

It's hard to remember a three or four week period in my lifetime when there has been such a confluence of events ranging from the mystifying to the horrifying. Yesterday, I was looking back to the 1980's, when I worked as a Time Magazine Letters Correspondent. I mean, I was unusually clued in during that time to world and national news, but our process for accessing it seems positively prehistoric right now. This was pre-internet and pre-CNN. In addition to all the Time Inc. magazines, we were expected to read the New York Times every morning before starting work, so that we would not respond to a letter (mailed perhaps a week before in response to two- or three-week old Time story) inappropriately. None of us had televisions in our office, but when word got out about a particularly newsworthy event -- I remember the explosion of the Challenger in 1986 -- we would all flock to the editorial offices to find TVs that were tuned into a major network's special report. Yet this only happened a handful of times over that entire decade. Is this because fewer serious events took place, or simply because we did not have access to up-to-the-minute reporting? I don't know. I do know that I was not tempted to remain in the world of journalism once my student loans were paid off, because, in the end, I did not find breaking news exciting. I was not overly "attracted" to it.

This coming week certainly has the potential to be very negatively newsworthy.  Even for me, the old instinct is there to tune in to some news outlet or other and see what is happening in Cleveland.

And yet it occurs to me that so many recent major events (and even historical ones) have really been set in motion by individuals, be they prime ministers, presidents, politicians, police or citizens. An individual thinks a thought or feels a feeling, and then translates that thought or feeling into action. Sometimes I feel like Pavlov's dog, being "fed" the resulting news story, running to the television for more as we used to do at my job, and then spiraling downhill into my own cycle of fear. How is it possible to maintain some personal power and positivity in a week like this?

I think it is to remember that I am an individual too, and I can make positive choices in response to my own thoughts and feelings. I can choose to focus on things other than the news this week. I can choose to hang out only with delightful people, to do only beautiful things, and to take only forward-moving actions. I can choose to make gratitude lists each day. I can create beauty or help someone. I can love something or someone. If a frisson of fear tries to take hold, I can do even more of the above to create a momentum of love. If I hear or see news that shocks or saddens, I can at least try to bless the people involved, and step backward to get a larger perspective on the extraordinary growth that the planet is undergoing. I can look for positive aspects of the news. I can believe that my own individual decisions have an invisible, healing ripple effect.

Remember my visit to Norwich this spring, to the chapel dedicated to Julian of Norwich? Tomorrow the BBC is broadcasting a special dedicated to an examination of her "Revelations of Divine Love," believed to be the first book written in English by a woman. I am not sure that I will be able to access the program over here, but there's someone whose choices have reverberated in a positive way. Perhaps I can focus on her this week.