News reports on radio and television and on most social media sites are filled with murder and mayhem, political upheaval and fiscal irresponsibility. Full of danger and fear mongering, horrific events and tragedy. Wikipedia tells me that physiologist, Walter Bradford Cannon, coined the term ‘fight of flight response’ - the internal response we all have to scary things. I put two and two together and decided that we spend too much time in fight or flight just by listening to the news, watching all the dreadful things on news, and constant poking at each other on our electronic gadgets.
I’m not much of a mathematician, but the next bit of addition was about our ‘specialness’. We are all special. We’re taught that since..well.. since we’re old enough to be told how special we are. And, yes, it’s true. We’re all special! The only problem is that ‘special’ people believe that they will never get hurt. We’ve all been protected from skinned knees and falling down, from having any contact with germs or anything that might hurt our little ones.
So what I’ve determined is that we are in an extremely unbalanced world. And yet we live in a world of great abundance. That abundance is either really all horrible or really cotton candy. Fight or flight. Special and protected.
What is really unbalanced is my attitude tonight. I’ve talked about either end of the spectrum of our lives. At this writing, I realized that most of us live somewhere in-between, in the middle of that continuum. Keeping us from freezing into a fight or flight mode, or becoming unconscious and unaware of how we need to be aware of our surroundings. When we stay in our centre, we can keep our lives as safe and comfortable as possible.
“The major work of the world is not done by geniuses.
It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives,
who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner.”
~ Gordon B. Hinkley
Author's note: Edited February 10, 2024
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