It’s easy (for me) these days to go about collecting bad news. Bad news has many categories in my mind. There is the kind that shows up on NPR as I make coffee. There’s the kind that comes from hearing about someone else’s loss. There’s the kind that comes from a medical report. There’s the kind that comes from mistreatment and hurtful behavior.There’s the trivial kind that comes with weather I don’t like or too many redlights.
There are more, but you get the picture.
I don’t want to be a collector of bad news, and at the same time, I don’t want to shove my head in the sand and pretend that these things are not happening. I want to be well informed, and I want to find balance in life as well.
I’ve started looking for the sweetness in the moment. I don’t know why I started calling it that. Maybe it was because all of the bad news left me feeling bitter. If this feeling were a food or drink that tasted bitter, I’d look for some way to sweeten it. And so, I have started looking for the sweetness in the moment. Not a sweetness to pretend the bad isn’t happening, but to remind myself that the bad news is not all there is in the world.
The other day I was standing in line at the grocery store. I could feel an inner grumble starting inside of me. So, I asked: where’s the sweetness in this moment? I immediately tuned in to the conversation going on between the person in front of me and the cashier. The person in front of me was having some physical difficulty managing the moving of items from basket to belt and back into the basket again, and the cashier was being so kind, so generous in helping. There was the sweetness in that moment, and I was witness to it. Another time, it was on a walk, and I was getting hot and sweaty. Where’s the sweetness in this moment? Look up. And so I did. The canopy of trees and the blue sky and the sunlight that has shifted a little more towards blue as fall descends were all magnificent. There was the sweetness in that moment. (I need to look up more often).
I’ve repeated this a dozen times in the last few days. This simple practice allows me to belong to the moment. The sweetness of the moment. I like to imagine that every time I do that, I’m a co-builder of belonging in this world, even one so bent on bad news.
~Bob Patrick
