Rebecca Walker shares five ways out of the muck for all those not immediately feeling the happy new year vibe.
Writing Prompt: What inspires you to focus on the good?
The dawn of 2011 has been mixed. Healthy family, busy writing life, and beautiful Hawaiian rain. Watched "Inception" and "I Am Love," two brilliant films that inspired me to no end. Patti Smith's "Just Kids" is bringing me back to the magical vortex of New York -- the mecca where so many of us began on this perilous road of love, life and art. I'm having one hell of a literary visit.
But honestly, I've also been feeling melancholy. I'm working on a book in its one-millionth draft, missing friends 6,000 miles away, and shielding my eyes and soul from the news on more iGadgets than I can shake a stick at -- Twitter and Facebook on iPhone, The New Yorker and The Guardian on iPad, cnn.com on my iMac. The world is looking bleak, people. Folks losing homes and jobs. America not living up to its ideals. Legos selling Prisoner Transport Vehicles as toys. Our lovely President looking exhausted and defeated.
Sometimes it's so easy to be mesmerized by all that's wrong. My husband says negativity is like a bully on the playground, and he's right. The bully is the same size as all the other kids, but seems so much bigger. Just thinking about that mean kid makes the heart pound with fear. Everything else falls away -- your best friend and good grades, the leftover pizza from Chez Panisse your mom tucked into your lunchbox...
So how to keep our eyes on the prize? How to acknowledge the truly awful, but rob it of oxygen? How to banish that bully and magnetize the coolest bunch of friends a girl could ever want?
Here are my tools to fan the hot flames of everything enlightening and regenerative. These are the ideas that bring me back from the ledge:
- Gratitude. Remember what your grandma who lived through the depression always said: "I was upset because I had no shoes, then I met someone with no feet?" Car stuck in mud? Thank you! I have a car. It's not being carried away by a tsunami. I even have Triple A. Thank you!
Finally, the most important element to this focusing on the Good is, drum roll please:
Focus on the good. How's that for a New Year's resolution?
Love,
Rebecca
Originally posted on She Writes.