What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
During the last Great War, there were posters about that said “Keep Calm and Carry On”. Not a bad idea, it seems at present we are paralysed and hanging on every word that spews out of social media regarding a war here, a war there. Start doom scrolling and pretty soon you’ll be reaching for the anti-depressants.
Let me paint you a little picture:
Go back, say 300 years. The majority of us lived in the country and carried out some sort of agricultural task, or something related to it. Yes, there were cities but not as we know them.
I’m Arthur, I live in Little Snoozing in the heart of Lincolnshire. It’s a small village of maybe 100 people, most of whom are related in some way or another. We all work together to support each other where possible, go to church and work 6 days a week. I know this isn’t entirely accurate, as there were serfs and tied villages and some terrible living conditions, but we all lived together in a tight knit, often partly intermarried community.
Our world was governed by what we could grow or farm ourselves. Nobody helped us, and we didn’t have time for what was happening in the big city. It didn’t affect us to any great degree. We concentrated on surviving, especially during winter.
We were suspicious of visitors as they often wanted something from us, never the other way round, or extremely rarely.
So there’s a picture of a village in the heart of Lincolnshire, getting on with its life, preparing for winter and next year’s crops.
Now around the 1700’s there was a massive war over the Baltic Sea, involving Sweden and Russia. It had nothing to do with us in our village. Nobody got pressed into fighting. it didn’t affect us, even if we’d heard about it. It was totally irrelevant to us. Even if we had, there was nothing we could do to affect the outcome. It wasn’t our business. We got on with our lives. We carried on. Our world probably ended at the next village and no further.
Now leap forward to the enlightened 21st Century. We are all joined together—if we choose to be by social media, the TV, smartphones and such. We are watching history repeat itself with yet another war far away, same mistakes being made and innocents dying. We don’t even know who is telling the truth anymore, so my thought on this is:
Let it go. Keep calm. Carry on. Yes, petrol will go up a bit, but nobody is killing is or dropping bombs on us. Get on with your life, enjoy what is around you, let all the politicians scheme and plot. It’s all about money anyway. Stay out of it. Worrying about it will only get you down.
KEEP CALM & CARRY ON! 😀