Monday’s are hard enough these days. The factory and cubicle workers of the world know that it’s quite often the cruelest day of the week. (Imagine if you worked at a factory that made cubicles. The horror, the horror) There are so many things that need immediate action and so many people that want our attention we often feel like we’re being pulled apart Spanish Inquisition style.
I made the mistake of compounding Monday’s cruelty by naively checking CNN’s web site this morning. I thought I would try and find a topic for today’s article, something light and colorful, something to hopefully lift those down Monday spirits and try to get things going on the right foot. Unfortunately, I was not that lucky.
All the stories are terrible these days. I know that news is usually more often bad than good, but it just seemed far worse than I remember. There’s almost a viciousness and abject indifference out there which seems to make it far easier for evil, true evil, to take hold.
Missing babies, toddlers run down in the streets of China, the disparity between rich and poor, the humdrum of our own work toiling away toward some unforeseeable end. The news is not the way to start the day. It only makes me feel smaller and less in control of the world around me and damn it, that’s depressing.
Of course I realize that making me depressed these days is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. I’m practically a walking, talking mockery of rationality and stoicism. I put up a very indifferent front but deep inside I am often overwhelmed with helplessness for those that are suffering around me.
When I was very young, perhaps five or six years old I saw those first commercials on TV about those suffering from famine and drought in Africa. I don’t remember if it was Ethiopia but something very similar. When I saw this commercial asking for money and they showed the images of the distended bellies of starving children I started to cry. I think about it now and I think I was actually weeping for them. I went to my mother, in tears and begged her that we had to send money; we had to help those people. She did her best to calm me and tried to explain where those people were and what the real problems were over there. She did manage to calm me down but I never forgot. I can still remember the commercial and how it made me feel.
When I see the News these days, especially on a Monday, I feel those old tears stirring. I have to force myself to remember my place in the world and that while things might be bad now; they can’t always be. So let’s get through this Monday and maybe just by doing so, the world might be a better place, if only for a little while.
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