The most insidious problem we face today is one we have some control over.
A pandemic of fear, suspicion and anger threatens to escalate into something more destructive than the coronavirus.
Almost everywhere you turn there’s news, or gossip, or conspiracies ambushing our thoughts.
I’m just back from a stellar weekend in the mountains.
How great to have such beauty in the backyard.
The timelessness, the sculpting of craggy peaks by millennia of wind, water and winters speak to the soul.
The bonsai-like growth of alpine trees, and the deep silence reveals possibilities usually missed in daily life.
Renewed and exhausted from miles of hiking, I returned to the usual hubbub of the times: traffic, elections, finances, the virus.
But my new view, coming from outside all that, helped me realize that these are rather small concerns in the life of a world, and that we choose where to focus our attention.
We can pay closer attention to things that immediately matter, like friends, family, animals and plants, food and beauty. And see even small kindnesses making big differences.
One important guy went as far as saying to not only do unto others as you’d have them do to you, but to love your enemy, and bless those that wrongfully use you.
What an idea.
Or, in the words of Marvin Gaye, “ … brother there’s no need to escalate. War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate.”
Each moment is a new opportunity.
Trevor Gloor
Sequim