Are You a Doom and Gloomer?
Posted: Monday, March 01, 2010
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
If you are, you have every right to be. Why? Because doom and gloom are really in now. Ask any Christian about Armageddon, which is right on our doorstep as we speak. And Lets face it, 90% of the news on the internet is bad . . . very bad. Iran will soon get nuclear weapons and bomb us all. Eight million unemployed. Government out of control. Wall Street out of control! Religion declining - global warming increasing. Gangs in every city and small town. Illegal immigration flooding our borders. Medicare going broke. Social security going broke. America going broke! And yes, Toyotas are falling apart.
Care to even think about your relatives? Hoo boy are they in hot water. Are your friends becoming a little more distant recently? Are you walking around with permanent worry lines planted on your forehead? Expenses exceeding income? Is your partner becoming a little more distant lately, too? Is this article going to end up over 1,000 words?
Okay, enough doom and gloom. Let's face it, our problems are no different than when cavemen walked around in animal skins and worried where the next meal was coming from. Things really don't change. There was a guy in Australia who always paraded up and down at a busy intersectionwith a sign on his back, "The End is Near!" He got hit by a bus and died. True story.
Lets face it, the end is near for all of us. If Armageddon doesn't get us, old age and disease will, or a bus. So what can we do about it? Keep busy and ignore it is good. Worry about it constantly - not good. Discuss it with your partner and bring him or her down as well - not good, too; they will leave you. Or, you can pray. Good. But your personal Armageddon will still lurk in the corners of your mind. It's that niggle that won't go away especially at night, after the lights are out, the TV is turned off, your partner is sleeping, and you lie there staring at the ceiling. Doom and gloom, doom and gloom.
My advice is to resist finding a way to get out of this psychological conundrum. Isn't that what you have always done in the past? The caveman could go out and kill something to feel better, but we don't have that luxury (at least most of us don't). We usually go to a movie, get on the internet and socialize, buy more shoes, or another pocket knife.
But let's not do that this time, Let's just simmer in our gloom and doom and see what happens. Have you ever tried it? Have you ever tried to make yourself as depressed as possible? I can tell you that depression doesn't work when you try to be depressed. Depression only works when you are afraid of it and try desperately to escape it. Inviting it in for a good chat simply renders depression helpless because it can't fathom someone welcoming it. Depression needs fear to navigate through your psyche.
So come on depression, let's see what you got! I'm going to sit here and think of everything bad that could possibly happen, but I'm not going to be afraid, and if just one of those doesn't happen, I "fear" that I will break out laughing at my foolishness. Sorry depression. You can't scare me anymore!
Something really refreshing happens when we face our fears. First, they are never as bad as we think they will be because we have a certain resiliency that can handle what comes up right now, but we have trouble handling our future fears, and fear is always in the future. And secondly, if we wring out all of our anxieties about our fears, which means paying attention to each and every one instead of running from it, a certain confidence builds inside.
Prayer or keeping our minds off of our fears, in other words keeping busy, only allows us to escape for the moment. The fears, the doom and gloom always return - and pretty quickly. So let's solve the doom and gloom once and for all. Are you up to it?
Okay, 800 words. I better quit. See, you were afraid that this article was going over 1,000 words!
Don't you feel better already?
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I definitely like the way you think! One of my sons summed it up well, I think. I've a medical condition that's serious. Two of my other sons plus my husband aren't handling this well. The third son said, Mom, when you die I'm going to feel terrible, but I refuse to feel terrible until then." YESSS Nice way of saying this moment is what counts, in my humble opinion.Thanks Joyce, I have been real close to death a couple of times, and what I found was a point when an unbelievable peace took over and all the fear went away. Peace to the tenth power. I've never been afraid of death since those incidents.
Metta......eI'm happy to report death has never been something I fear. It IS going to happen. What better test of faith, IMHO, than to not fear it?? :)Very true.
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