When the news exhausts you and people around you are tired, how do you choose to notice what’s good instead of only seeing what’s broken?
I love this time of year. Days getting longer, trees and flowers blooming, the world waking up after winter. And yet we’re exhausted by bad news—political disruption, mass shootings, rising prices. But noticing goodness, even in difficult times, changes everything.
When I look out the window, I see blue skies and the bright light of sunshine calling forth daffodils. I see goodness on a daily basis – the amazing creativity of my colleagues, the kindness of the cheesemonger who gave me cheese when I had no cash and trusted that I would return to pay at a later date (I did), the larger stories of courage and support arising from the war in Ukraine.
Our experience in the world is the collective result of what we put into it. If you’re feeling weary, try noticing what’s good in your world today. And if you don’t notice anything good, perhaps you can be the one to create some of what you’re longing for? As Sheenagh Pugh reminds us in her poem, sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse, and sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss.
