NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS?

I thought about this old saying recently in light of recent events that have caused a lot of people to feel anxious when watching or listening to the news.  I try to help people who come to me to let go of their worries about things that they hear on the news and often will suggest that they not watch or listen to news, especially news on TV.  I have previously blogged about this and freely confess that I am biased when it comes to this as I have not watched TV news since three-forths of the way through the Vietnam War [about 1970].  I stopped watching because I had friends who had been drafted and were fighting in the war and I did not want to see news about their being wounded or killed.  I had a deferment because of medical school and yet I felt guilty that my friends had to fight in the war or leave the country [I had a friend make this choice].

After the war, I decided to continue not watching the TV news as it was frequently focused on violence and negative things that were stressful to watch and listen to and I did not think I gained anything from watching and listening to it.  It did not seem to directly motivate me to do something about what I was witnessing on the news and would instead lead me to feel stressed and then be less able to do something to counteract what appeared to be happening.  It was not as if the negative news was balanced with positive news.  Even if it were, I believe that the negative news would have more influence over me than the positive. I have joked with people that I don't know what country I live in or which state, etc. Of course that is not true. I get my news from radio [unless it is a negative focus or is describing violence] and print sources that includes reading news on the internet.  However, I avoid looking at photos depicting violence, etc.

Avoiding TV news and references to violence would be difficult for a lot of people. Since watching the TV news makes a lot of people anxious and feel stressed and pessimistic about the future, why do they watch it?  I had several people who watched the air planes flying into the Twin Towers in New York City thousands of times. They couldn 't stop themselves.  It seemed to represent a hope that the next time they watched it they would find out it wasn't real after all.  Maybe the same desire keeps many people watching TV news in hopes that it will also turn out to not be real. Well, that puts control over stress in our lives directly in the hands of those who control the news that is shown.  

I encourage people to take back control of their lives and the stressful events that they expose themselves to. To me this means no TV news and no violent shows and no overwhelmingly painful commercials about dogs and cats being mistreated or children suffering from cancer.  It is vey hard to erase those sad faces from our brains and yet having them there does not help those animals or those children.  It can keep us from being more active helping those in need as we are preoccupied coping with the stress of remembering these events and the hopelessness that often comes with it.

So, no news is good news!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK [PRAY] FOR

Regarding our relationship to God, I have often wondered about what we ask for and why we seem to ask for what we already have, or at least are freely given.  I first thought about this when I became aware of how often Christian religions encourage their congregations to say prayers that ask for things that are already freely given.  So, why is this?  Is it a way of reminding people of what is being offered to them already?  Is it a way to strengthen someone's knowledge of doctrine so they will be more obedient? Or, is it a way of avoiding facing the responsibility that each person has [according to my understanding of the belief systems that represent Christianity today] to choose to accept what is offered freely to them. It appears that each person's choosing is critical to their opening thenselves up to receive what is freely offered.

In my work with people who come to me for help, they frequently avoid making choices that would help themselves and instead they take on responsibility for others. This taking on responsibility for others seems motivated by fears that things will get worse if they don't do this.  Their lives are then occupied with worries about what others will do that could end up making things worse.  This worry will then close them off from being able to choose to accept something for themselves, especially something that is freely given. If we live our lives feeling at the mercy of what others do, then we will not trust that anything can be freely given and we will believe that we are at the mercy of others [God?], and have to hope that what we need will be given to us, undeserving as we feel we are. Of course, since we only give to others as they are our responsibility, we can not have any needs ourselves.  So, forget having your needs recognized and responded to.

You might be able to tell now why I am concerned about how we pray as it seems that often we pray not that we will make the right choice and choose to accept and embrace what is offered to us, but instead pray to be given what we already have as if our choosing will do nothing.

It did occur to me that it might be hard to come up with ways to pray that focuses on our choosing and accepting what is freely given to us.  Of course, one prayer could be simply "please help me to choose what is offered to me." Another could be "open my heart to choose and accept what is offered to me and share this with others."  Another could be "help me to set aside my worries and fears that I might choose to accept what you offer to me and become stronger in my faith and hope and love."

In my work with people who come to me for help, I encourage them to choose to accept themselves and their strengths and then share these with others. You could say that their abilities are freely given to them and that choosing to see those abilties and then use them is similar to the prayers I have written above.  To be able to care about and love others, it seems that you have to be accepting and loving towards yourself first.

Therefore, how someone prays can make a big difference in how they feel about themselves and their fellow homo sapien sapiens, [and really all living things]. What do you think?

DID YOU DO [SAY] THAT OUT OF LOVE?

Is it fair or reasonable to judge what we do or say by the standard of whether or not it was based on love for the other?  How would that work?  Would we be able to say anything? Maybe the problem is the definition of love.  Love is..."an intense feeling of affection, fondness, tenderness, attachment, endearment, worship, adoration, passion."  There must be other definitions of love...such as from "A Literate Passion: Letters from Anis Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953:  "what is love but the acceptance of the other, whatever he is." Or what we can learn from music such as "What I Did For Love" from the musical "A Chorus Line."  This song seems to honor love as the reason that we have meaning in our lives. Or what about the bible such as "1 Corinthians 13: 4-8. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; were there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."  

So, a lot of good things connected to loving. St. Augustine is reported to have summarized his faith by saying that all you need is to "love and do what you will." The bible repeatedly refers to "what is in your heart" as what is important in our relationship to God. This might also be referring to love. But what does it mean to say and do things out of love? Does it refer to our intention in what we say or do? Does it refer to our feeling and being empathic towards others? If we are all connected and as some believe all God's children. Then should we act in a loving way towards everyone? Does that really mean everyone? Does that mean not judging others? Does it mean not isolating others? 

I know that I have experienced over and over again in my work with people who come to me for help, that we are meant to be with each other and that our happiness seems directly related to how we treat other people.  What do you think?

DOES ENABLING OTHERS SEPARATE US FROM THOSE WE ARE ENABLING?

So what is wrong with enabling others? What is enabling others? In my experience with my patients, enabling seems to be when someone takes on responsibility for others and this then makes it easier for [enables] them to avoid being responsible for themselves. The contexts for what is considered enabling is important as I have seen that very frequently it looks and feels like enabling is the right thing to do. If we don't enable, something very bad could and it seems likely would happen. An example is making excuses for your spouse not taking their responsibility financially for fear that they will blow up and reject you. A frequently mentioned example involves some form of helping someone continue their addictive behaviors by giving them money or buying them alcohol or making excuses for their behaviors. Enablng is also considered positive if it is actually helping someone to complete a task that they actually needed help with.  I prefer to label this behavior as supportive and not call it positive enabling. My patients have difficulty [as do I] understanding what enabling is and asking them to understand positive and negative enabling may lead to confusion. Plus, I see enabling as only negative.  

So, back to the question I raised in the title of this blog, if we enable others does this inevitably lead to our actually being more distant from them?  Many of my patients tell me that when they need help after helping others for years, the people they have helped end up getting very angry. This is confusing to my patients, as they feel like they are not asking for much.  When we discuss these situations it becomes clear that the people they have been helping, can only see their own needs and not anyone elses. Then my patients were able to see that they had set this up by doing things for others instead of encouraging them to do it for themselves.  

IS IGNORANCE BLISS? OR DOES KNOWING THAT WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING A SOURCE OF BLISS?

So where does the saying "ignorance is bliss" come from? The internet tells me that it comes from Thomas Gray's poem "On A Distant Prospect on Eton College" with the line stating: "Where ignorance is bliss / tis folly to be wise."  Now, ignorance means a lack of knowledge, eduction or awareness. [Merriam-Webster]. One implication is that we are or would be less stressed if we knew less or were aware of less. Well, if knowing something leads to feeling stressed then it might be preferaable to not know that thing. I feel that watching the television news can lead to stress and so not watching and can be less stressful. The stress from the television news can be related in part to the visual impact compared to listening to news on the radio.

I prefer to think that bliss [or at least feeling calm and not stressed] may be obtained if we are aware of and embracing the fact that we don't know anything. I had read that Socrates is reported to have concluded that the reason that he was the wisest person in ancient greece [accoording to the Oracle at Delphi] was because he knew that he didn't know anything. So is knowing that you don't know anything like being ignorant?  I don't think so unless we define ignorance as choosing to be open to what happens and not thinking that we know things when we don't. Thus, knowing that we don't know anything, allows us to be open to new learning as once we think we know something then our brain will stop listening to what is actually happening and will instantly substitute what we think we know. Thus, if we are open to learning [know that we don't know anything] we will actually be able to listen and learn from others. 

So, ignorance defined as knowing that we don't know anything [until we open our minds to others and listen to them] is desirable as it allows us to learn right now from others and from our experiences.

What do you think?