I’m feeling cynical today, and I’ve found it best not to write when I’m feeling cynical. Scoffing, incredulous, disenchanted me. Without fail, though, guilt runs hand-in-hand with cynicism for me. I feel ashamed that I should be having feelings of anything but joyous gratitude for all that is good and right in my life.
Then it creeps back in. That hangdog notion because pessimism had found me.
It is easy to get caught up though, isn’t it? Browsing the headlines, for three minutes, will certainly push anyone directly into the quicksand pit. Helicopters crashing. Oceans warming. People murdering. Liars lying. People in charge pushing their thumbs down harder. And all of these things are at arm’s length. There are issues in our personal lives which may feel all notched up and close.
The new year bodes. Truthfully, I think the whole New Year’s Eve thing is overrated. It’s a bit of a sham. People think, or say they think, it is a time for starting over. A new beginning. Ring in the New Year. Out with the old. Here’s a truth. If you really want to start something over, the best time is this minute. Waiting until a specific date is just a method of procrastination masked with a noble offset. Here’s another truth. I can’t remember, in all my five plus decades of new years, any single one of them changing significantly from the day before. The sun comes up the east, the eggs taste just like eggs, and the headlines are exactly the same, but the number at the top, in the dateline, has flipped a digit.
Can you hear the dripping cynicism?
I don’t particularly like this when it happens. It goes against my logic. But, when we are faced with troubles, or worries, it can seem difficult to maintain inner peace. The mind gets all mired down with more negativity, and gloom. The problem seems bigger. We lose sight of our ability to focus on solutions.
The best way, I think, is not necessarily to try to mask it with false cheer. Better, I think, to rediscover our curiosity. Yes, to get curious. We begin to ask ourselves questions about the world around us, puzzling out new possibilities, probing for ways to make the moment better. Finding our ability to build solutions and work constructively.
Sometimes, simply saying, “I don’t know.” But think of the possibilities that might be out there, just on the other side of our understanding. It could happen. There might be a something waiting on the breath of “I don’t know.”
And when we see it in this light, we see that there just might be a way. In this minute. In this time.
Whether the big glitter ball is dropping or not.
Happy New Minute.
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“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde
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“Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
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“…God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn’t stopped since.”
― James Scott Bell, Sins of the Fathers
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