Living Positively In a Negative World

Earlier in July, I was watching the news and saw a very disturbing police video of a woman who had called 911 for help because she believed an intruder was trying to enter her apartment. It turned out that the woman, Sonya Massey, had mental health challenges. When the police arrived at her residence, they found a car with windows knocked out in the parking lot. They spoke with Sonya Massey and entered her apartment. But they ended up shooting her in the face. Three times. One of their body cams recorded it. How can we make sense of this news? Where do we store these tragedies in our minds and our souls? How can avoid the fear and angst of the everyday ugliness surrounding us?

With the videos and the footage of people being shot all over the country and the world, we are now a society who watch real people die violently in real-time, often from the palms of our hands or from the screens in our laps. Whether it is violence in movies or on the street, unedited and gruesome details can be seared into our lives whether these events touched someone we know and love.

As Anne Lamott wrote, “If you are alive, conscious, and sensitive, which is to say, human, you’re going to have incredible joy and terror this side of eternity.  It’s LIFE 101, life on life’s terms, not on ours, all these things – fear, joy, grace, mess, isolation, communion – all mixed together.

I hate this more than I can say.  I don’t like everything to touch.

Also, I don’t love that at sixty-one, your skin can still break out, and you might still get audited, or shingles.  Not to mention that every so often, out of the blue, a sniper sneaks back into the tree and picks off someone without whom you can’t – or at least don’t want to go on.

Or that other people, like obviously Jimmy Carter, handle fearful news with faith and elegance, while you KNOW that you will be more like a cross between Kylie Jenner and Ed Grimley.”  

What’s troubling to me as a minister is how little reflection I’ve seen people of faith give the increasing violence to which we are exposed in our everyday lives. What spiritual and emotional trauma is done to our psyches by just watching the news?

In another sermon, we can talk about the ethics of 24 hour news. Today, I’m more interested in the effects on our spirits of this kind of knowing. Think about the emotional and spiritual burden of witnessing violent, destructive and negative events…

     Car accidents

     Suicides

     School shootings

     Police arrests and shootings

And then there is the everyday stuff of life – co-workers who argue, gossip that is shared, difficult relationships, friends and family members who are sick or die…

How should the faithful respond to the trauma of negativity that comes with living every day? In his book “Staying Positive in a Negative World”, Roger Campbell writes “Negativism is a thief, robbing life of adventure and joy. It affects every institution of society.” He advises purposeful reprogramming of our lives to reduce the trauma to our spirits and lives by all the negativity that comes with living in our world.

 Here are some of his suggestions:

1.      Restructure your time and exposure to negativity. Giving too much attention to negative can lead us to more and more inner negativity. He suggests reducing our time spent with negative and depressing people.  He also advises watching less news. When we watch or listen to news in the morning, we can start our day with the reminder that bad things have happened while we were sleeping. We talk about the news at work or among family on a regular basis and it continues to focus us on the problems and sadness of our world. We go home in the evening and watch it again before going to bed. It can be that only one person’s death is on the news that day, but we have exposed ourselves to it over and over again. We actually feed our fears by listening to all the trouble several times over. Any activity, entertainment, recreation, or pastime that violates your sense of well-being disrupts your spiritual development. Choose to engage in life-giving, soul-reviving activities and your spiritual development will grow.

2.     Decide that you do not have time for negativity, depressed moods or misery. Fill your life with gratitude and thankfulness. Even when times of grief and sadness are unavoidable, face it with hope. He also advises seizing every pleasant moment and squeezing out every ounce of joy it contains.

3.     Campbell offers a very powerful exercise that I have used in a number of groups. The people present are divided randomly into three groups: poor, middle class, and wealthy. Each group is asked to list the worries they have about money. When I have done this exercise, I notice that the poor group is quick to make their list of worries. The middle-class group thinks for a moment and then begins to make their list. But the wealthy group is the most interesting to observe. After some thoughts, they begin to make a list of stressors about money. Usually, this is the group that works the longest and ends up with a laundry list of stressors.

A.      The potential harm to their employees if the company isn’t successful.

B.     Kidnapping or demands for ransom of family members

C.     Bankruptcy

D.    Losses in financial investments

The list goes on and on. 

The point is that all people have stress about money. In order to stay positive in a negative world, Campbell encourages us to put away the money blues. Having more money causes stress.

4.      Another way to stay positive in a negative world is to look for the best in others. When we focus on other people’s faults, we see faults. When we focus on other people’s strong points, we make strong relationships.

5.     To be a positive person, we must strengthen our ability to look beyond the trouble of today and to recognize that it will pass.  By looking forward – and not back – we focus on hope for the future. Our Biblical word today expresses that sentiment beautifully:

This is the gate of the Lord;

The righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me

And have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected

 Has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing;

 It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made;

 Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!

O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!

Psalm 118: 20-25

6.      The final suggestion Campbell gives to us about being positive in a negative world is to “gain by giving”.  To be positive, we must help others. “In giving, we gain; in aiding others we are enriched.”

There is a story which illustrates this.  In the weeks after the end of WWII, in the refugee camps for orphans and dislocated kids the children couldn’t sleep. But the grownups discovered that after you fed them, if you gave them each a piece of bread just to hold, they would drift off.  They called it holding bread. There was more to eat if they were still hungry. This was bread to hold, to remind them and connect them to the great truth – that morning would come, that there were grown -ups who cared and were watching over them, that there would be more food when they awoke. 

We are each other’s holding bread.  -from Anne Lamott

When we are down and depressed, when the news or politics or life’s events bring us to a point of shaking our heads in hopelessness, it is important to take a moment to re-evaluate our activities.

·       Have we restructured our time to reduce the exposure to negativity?

·       Are we focused on gratitude and thankfulness? Using a “This in the day the Lord has made” attitude?

·       Do we allow worries about money to overtake us?

·       Do we focus on other people’s attributes and strengths?

·       Are we focused on the future instead of the past?

·       Are we sharing what we have with others?

Ghandi said that there is so much hunger in the world that God comes to earth as bread.

These are the steps to finding greater joy and satisfaction in our lives! It is the bread of God which feeds and nourishes our souls.  Hang on to that bread… and when you can, be that holding bread. 

 Resources Used:

   Campbell, Roger.  “Staying Positive in a Negative World”.  Victor Books.

   Anne Lamott, weekly blog