When I was little, I has the habit of seeing the tiny beautiful things. I’d look at my toys, or the flowers, or the clouds in the sky. And that wasn’t to ignore the uncomfortable things that were happening in my life, but to see it as part of the whole... that there was still beauty to be found, I just had to be willing to look for it and to SEE it. I think it was a very happy balance. It’s what I raised my kids to do, too, when we lived in what would be considered a slum neighborhood, we would do a little walk and look for a flower poking up through the sidewalk, or look at the sunset, or see a bird flying overhead. It was really an exercise, I guess, in training our minds to see the world around us in a different way.
I’ve noticed recently that a lot of my happiness and hope stemmed from seeing everyone as a spiritual brother or sister when I was younger. I’d see the soul behind the form. If someone was angry or unbalanced, I’d imagine them as a little baby or a child that is hurting deep inside. That definitely made me more compassionate and my heart would swell when I would interact with someone rather than retreat into a hardened shell.
I do think that modern media is not helping us. Journalists love to focus on the negative, they always have, because it sells. And we have constant access to thousands of stories now, rather than how it was decades ago, where you might get world news on a tv station, or the local paper, but otherwise you would step outside and have to interact with the world and people directly around you. There was so much beauty and reality in that. Now so many of us live online in a disconnected existence, and so many of us are trained to look for the bad and the negative in everything around us. It’s not dissimilar to when I watch too much crime documentaries... I start imagining the dark side of people everywhere I go, and I don’t think that’s healthy at all. Our brains are really adaptive to what we consume!
Something kind of unexpected that made a different with me recently was reading Charles Dickens. He was good at getting into the mind of all kinds of people, and our weird and unbalanced ways of existing, but as I was reading his stories I started to feel compassion for others around me. Like I would see them as a whole person, not just the surface, not just their words, but an entire soul with experiences and joys and pain.
Way back in the 90s I had friends who would comment on how annoyingly positive I was lol. I kind of miss that. I hope to get back to that way of seeing the world. Not so say that I didn’t have horrible things going on, I just had a different way of approaching it.
OMGoodness, Melissa! We are kindred spirits. Truly. I resonate with everything you said here. In fact... if you let me, I'd love to share it! Maybe in a newsletter? You're a wonderful natural writer.
Aw, thank you so much! That means the world to me as I have been following you for quite some time. Thank you for the complement, and sure, I would be honored if you wanted to share what I wrote.
When I was little, I has the habit of seeing the tiny beautiful things. I’d look at my toys, or the flowers, or the clouds in the sky. And that wasn’t to ignore the uncomfortable things that were happening in my life, but to see it as part of the whole... that there was still beauty to be found, I just had to be willing to look for it and to SEE it. I think it was a very happy balance. It’s what I raised my kids to do, too, when we lived in what would be considered a slum neighborhood, we would do a little walk and look for a flower poking up through the sidewalk, or look at the sunset, or see a bird flying overhead. It was really an exercise, I guess, in training our minds to see the world around us in a different way.
I’ve noticed recently that a lot of my happiness and hope stemmed from seeing everyone as a spiritual brother or sister when I was younger. I’d see the soul behind the form. If someone was angry or unbalanced, I’d imagine them as a little baby or a child that is hurting deep inside. That definitely made me more compassionate and my heart would swell when I would interact with someone rather than retreat into a hardened shell.
I do think that modern media is not helping us. Journalists love to focus on the negative, they always have, because it sells. And we have constant access to thousands of stories now, rather than how it was decades ago, where you might get world news on a tv station, or the local paper, but otherwise you would step outside and have to interact with the world and people directly around you. There was so much beauty and reality in that. Now so many of us live online in a disconnected existence, and so many of us are trained to look for the bad and the negative in everything around us. It’s not dissimilar to when I watch too much crime documentaries... I start imagining the dark side of people everywhere I go, and I don’t think that’s healthy at all. Our brains are really adaptive to what we consume!
Something kind of unexpected that made a different with me recently was reading Charles Dickens. He was good at getting into the mind of all kinds of people, and our weird and unbalanced ways of existing, but as I was reading his stories I started to feel compassion for others around me. Like I would see them as a whole person, not just the surface, not just their words, but an entire soul with experiences and joys and pain.
Way back in the 90s I had friends who would comment on how annoyingly positive I was lol. I kind of miss that. I hope to get back to that way of seeing the world. Not so say that I didn’t have horrible things going on, I just had a different way of approaching it.
Anyway... enough of my soapbox lol!
OMGoodness, Melissa! We are kindred spirits. Truly. I resonate with everything you said here. In fact... if you let me, I'd love to share it! Maybe in a newsletter? You're a wonderful natural writer.
Aw, thank you so much! That means the world to me as I have been following you for quite some time. Thank you for the complement, and sure, I would be honored if you wanted to share what I wrote.
Do you want to be credited as "Melissa J"? Do you have some place online you'd like me to link to?
I don’t have any active online presence, and sure you can credit me as Melissa J, that works :-)
Okay! :)
Oh yay! This is fun... I'll incorporate it into my next newsletter. THANKS, Melissa!
I’m very happy to hear that, thank you!