I saw a dear friend yesterday, and she was deeply upset by the news of the world. There is so much bad, she said, it hurts me all the time.  The world seems to be becoming such a hateful place, I can hardly sleep or find peace. What can I do?

I told her I was no magician, no seer. I could only share what I do, she must find her own way.

What do you do?, she asked, and she touched me with her neediness and pain.

I do not believe the world is a bad place, I said, or a worse place than ever. History is the great soother, the great teacher of perspective.

I believe the world has not changed as much as we fear, I think that we perceive it and see it in ways that have radically changed.  We see it all day, we drown in it. We forget.

I read a book the other week about the hundreds of thousands of women who were once tortured and burned alive at the stake all over the “civilized” world for speaking their minds and raising their voices. Would they tell me the world is becoming a sadder place?

The human mind is complex and fickle, it hates to recall the past, only the moment. The world was created and born a struggle between ideas of good and ideas of bad, every bad thing is done by someone who thinks they are doing good. It is the war that never ends, is never over.

I think of a world in which every good deed on the earth made the news every day, would we be so bleak and fearful?

This is the human condition, a truth we can only accept, almost all of us are just trying to live our lives, as always. It is not hiding or heads in the sand to accept life as the Gods we say we worship created it. The good and loving people in the world are not in our news, we can only imagine them and their lives, which are lost to us. I think of the ones I know, one by one, this opens up the better part of me.

When I hear of sad or bad news, I bless the suffering and hold them in the light. Then I turn inward. Each sad thing, each bad story that breaks through my walls and sanctity, my illusions and conceits, my arrogance and self-absorbtion, my mistakes and misjudgements,  has a message for me:

make myself better, find the better part of me, call it to life. Write a poem. Take a picture. Tell a friend how much they mean to me. Walk a dog. Love my wife. That is what I do. To ask how I can never become what I hate or what I fear?

Every painful thing I hear, every argument that echoes through the ether, every cry of pain will make me better. Will make me understand myself, reach out to another human, make an emotional connection, teach another hungry student, share what I have learned, love my wife, care for an animal, forego the judgment of another person, drink at the sweet well of empathy.

I call on the better parts of me, each time. I believe there is power in that.

What does it mean to love our ideas God, or any god, but to love life? To be grateful for every hour and day of it, to seek out the love and beauty and light of the world and make love to it, open mind and heart and soul to it, bless it and then bless it again. Nothing can take that away from me or us, it is a gift only we can bestow.

What can we do? We can be. I can be the man I want to be and hope to be. That the world demands me to be.

So that, I told my friend, is my choice. Each bit of pain in the world can change me or make me better. Can turn me to fear, or away from it. To despair or hope.  To hate or away from it. Living in my world means never telling another person what to do, respecting their choices and paths. I will not add to the roar or righteousness and anger.

And if it should come to pass that the world is really a sad and awful place – something I do not see or believe – think how much better i will become.

I till strive to be a better man, every time, and the pain and sorrow that is a part of being human will make me a better man, perhaps every time. Think where that could take me.

An easy thing to say, a hard thing to do, it is essence of what it means to have a spiritual center. I do not speak poorly of myself any longer, I do not speak poorly of the world. It is listening.

So that is what I do, I told my friend. I find the better parts of me, every time. I do not have the power or will to change the external world, the nature of life, the awful beauty of being human. I can change me, anytime.

I hope you will call me or come and see me tomorrow and tell me what you do.