Between all we hear and read each day, is there a space where both the truth of events and our best response to them become clear? As if, by finding our way through all the agendas, opinions and sensational curiosity baiting, there’s a place “the truth” of any given situation rests. Then, a response within us that can somehow match it and serve to bring essential values to life.
Because, often, it seems all the information being thrown at us is simply confusion: countless differing perspectives, interpretations or priorities clamouring to have us accept “their” version of events then live our lives accordingly (Notes One). Shaping the ideas people have in mind and act upon seems a lucrative business, for whatever reason.
With so many voices attempting to find their ways into our heads and influence the thoughts we’ll entertain there, isn’t it increasingly difficult to actually be sure of “truth”? Everything being so dialled up, so extreme, so emotive must risk desensitising us to the realities of life (Notes Two). As if the new base level for taking something seriously is this tense, screaming voice of impending doom. Can’t truth be spoken calmly?
In part, it’s perhaps because we’re now aware of so much and how many of our systems are interconnected: bringing “everything” to awareness, we can arguably create the changes necessary to eradicate all the many, many problems the world and its people are burdened with. This sense of everything both mattering and being connected, in some way, with suffering either now, in the past or in the future.
The world becoming conscious of itself and attempting to bring everything that matters to the table “must” be a recipe for overwhelm. Not only is life now more complex and demanding than even the fairly recent past, but we’re being asked to become aware of all the personal, global situations that have and do go into making our lives what they now are.
In that, how are we to tune out all the superfluous voices and tune into all those that convey the truth? How are we to gain a clear sense of how things stand and what all of our lives are playing into? Is it possible to get to that “place” where, in our minds, we can see the truth of our situation with all its multifaceted difficulties? Can the human mind still bend itself around “how we live” without crumpling under the pressure?
And, if we can, is there a clear path for how we might resolve things? How we might stand in the world with regard to every single thing that matters within it. How we might communicate these concerns without life descending into one argument after another. How we might handle this awareness of things outside our capacity for control without feeling completely powerless. (Notes Three)
If information is there to help us understand reality and choose wisely within it, how are we to assimilate all this and not be debilitated by it?
Notes and References:
Note 1: What is the public conversation?
Note 1: Information might be there, but can we find it?
Note 1: Caught in these thoughts
Note 1: Which voice can we trust?
Note 2: Effect, if everything’s a drama
Note 2: Desensitised to all we’re told?
Note 2: Is this the ultimate test?
Note 3: The value & cost of our words
Note 3: Thoughts of idealism and intolerance
Note 3: Ways thought adds spin to life
Note 3: Will things change if we don’t make them?
Note 3: Too much responsibility?