Learning To Breath

I’ve been thinking about my generation a lot lately. More specifically I’ve been thinking about the many conversations I’ve had with those in my generation and how those conversations tend toward apathy or hopelessness. We are in a tough spot. For those of us who have access to television or the internet (and in the U.S. that’s a good majority of us) we are surrounded by a constant barrage of depressing and/or downright overwhelming news.

Here is a short list of things you should be aware of and worried about:

-Polar ice caps melting
-Rising seas
-Global Warming
-Global Cooling
-Economic Collapse
-Terrorism
-Clean Water Shortages
-Peak Oil
-Communism
-Capitalism
-Socialism
-Cuba
-Iran
-Your Next Door Neighbor
-Everyone And Everything

This is the age of theories, the age of opinions, the age of scientific backing for whatever you want to believe in. One media outlet says this as fact while another says the opposite. Some say we are doomed, others say there is hope.

And then all of the noise turns to a dull hum and I find myself alone, in a room trying to listen to my heart override the desperate situation my mind has created. I become paralyzed and beyond overwhelmed. I sigh. I sigh again. I sigh a third time and then pitch myself backward onto the me-sized mattress that sits huddled against one white bedroom wall.

Where do I start with all of this? How do I live? How do I keep some sanity amongst all of this insanity?

If the world is ending tomorrow, or next year or in 2012 or whenever the hell it is that this theory or that states it surely will then how do I live right now? How do I get up from this me sized mattress to live in a world whose problems seem far beyond me?

Who am I and what can I do?

Then I talk with my housemates, talk with my friends, talk with my neighbors and talk with my family. I try to love all of them on varying levels. I look at what is around me, immediately around me, and focus on that. Today this friend is depressed and just needs someone to talk to. Or perhaps a neighbor is lonely and needs nothing more than a 5-minute conversation to help remind them that they are not alone in this world. Last night I called my grandmother. I had not spoke with her since Christmas (I know, its lame). We talked until my phone ran out of minutes and I cherished hearing her voice and how excited she was to hear mine.

And so this is the change I can make. I can love my family. I can love my friends. I can listen to my lonely neighbor who rambles on about god only knows what while I'm in the middle of a great conversation with an intelligent and beautiful woman. I can tend a little garden in the courtyard behind my apartment and pick up trash that blows down the street.

I can’t save the world, alone. But I can change it one simple act at a time.

I draw in a breath, hold it, remember that life is short and I should love deeply, and then exhale.