The Weight of the World

“My head’s full of the screams of all the dead and dying children in all the world’s war zones and in Americas colleges and schools.”

One of the people I follow on Twitter sent me this message earlier in the week.

I replied:

“No, it's not. Your mind is making all that noise and it's helping nobody - not the kids and certainly not you.”

At first glance, my response may seem unsympathetic and, perhaps, flippant, but there’s a wisdom behind those words which I received through experience. I can relate to this person’s fears and ‘dark imaginings’ (as Max Ehrmann calls them, in Desiderata) because they used to be my fears, too.

I used to worry about everything I could find to worry about. I’d actively hunt down subject matter that would help me wallow in that fear, such as watching footage of the Asian Tsunami or the World Trade Centre atrocity. I’d consider what it must have been like to be on the beach and see that tremendous wave coming, or to feel the floor beneath my feet give way in those towers, visualising myself utterly powerless to prevent my imminent doom and demise.

Did my grim empathy do anyone any good? Did it force time to rewind and allow me to save lives? Did it comfort the survivors or the families of the dead?

No, all it did was help exacerbate the depressive, negative swirl of thought in my mind, further deepening the darkness of my perception of life.

This process of thought was no use at all, to anyone. Quite the opposite: it caused mental torment within myself and that negative energy would have spread to the people around me, either through my communication with them, or because of my general sullen demeanour.

Adopting the pain of others in such global events – when you were not directly or even indirectly touched by those events, except to read about it or watch the video footage on the news - is, at best, futile, but it can also be very damaging to a person’s mental wellbeing…

Taking on these burdens are an example of how the ego schemes to keep us unhappy, and while this dysfunction of the egoic mind remains unchecked, it will always seek new attachments to fear and pain.

Your life could be, to all intents and purposes, perfect, but without the ability to discern the quality and value of your thoughts, your ego will find fault in anything it can and lure you back into a false perception of imperfection.

When you can’t get to sleep at night, or your days are consumed by macabre thoughts about such events, and you haven’t actually experienced those events first hand, then you are imagining it and your own mind is hurting you.

It is a false, selective and imaginary pain – and why would you want to imagine such horrors and play them in your head, when you weren’t involved?

The massacre of young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in December of last year, was something that every good-hearted person in the world would find abhorrent, and the outpouring of sympathy and sadness was – of course – a natural reaction to such a terrible event.

But what about the multitudes of children killed in the conflict in Syria, or those starving to death in Sub-Saharan Africa? What about the baby girls murdered or abandoned in India, because they were born the ‘wrong’ sex? What about the kids the world over who live and work on rat-and-disease-infested waste dumps to find scraps of metal they can sell, for a pittance, to recyclers? What about those who live both here and abroad who live in misery, under the constant threat of mental, physical and/or sexual abuse from the people they should most be able to trust?

If you consider them all and take their pain as your own, before too long you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.

And here’s the truth: that weight is not yours to bear, so let it go.

Relinquishing that pain does not mean that you don’t care. In fact, it puts you in a stronger position to do something that may actually be of use.

Leave the true, close-up grief to the survivors of these tragedies and give them your strength when they need it, or leave them alone, if they express that wish. (How many TV trucks turn up at school massacres and doorstep the families of the victims, when those families have asked for privacy?)

If you’re worried about the world, the most positive thing you can do, today, is to clear up your inner-environment – i.e. yourself – and make it a calmer and more peaceful place to live.

Once you’ve mastered that, you’ll radiate positive energy to those around you. Be kind to those you love (and even to those you don’t), make them smile when you have the chance and do what you can to help, when they need it (which isn’t necessarily when you think they need it).

To focus solely on the perceived negatives of this beautiful and vibrant planet is like viewing in a mirror the incredible machine that you are in command of - the human body; one of the most complex and brilliant organisms in the known Universe - and deeming it unworthy and imperfect because your mind judges the nose to be the wrong shape.

“With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.” – Max Ehrmann, Desiderata