To admit these are confusing times is a statement of the obvious, like saying water is scarce in the desert. I’m confused when I read lawmakers in Mississippi are crafting legislation that will require schools, including those with primarily black attendance, to fly the Confederate flag or lose their accreditation, (“Only in American,” The Week,2/2/2017, p. 6.) Why not swastikas in Jewish schools, I wondered.
Everywhere, alternate reality abounds, like the Bowling Green Massacre (Click) or the decision to replace military personnel on the National Security Council with a white supremacist. (Click) We have done more than drop down a rabbit hole. We are in a Kafkaesque world where we could wake up one morning as beetles .
Finding ourselves in a reality where the quantum world has greater predictability can be hard on human psyches. I’m guessing the lines waiting for a spot on the psychiatrist’s couch are longer and deeper than the gas lines during the 1973 oil crisis. No wonder so many of us gather on social networks to ask. “Is this real? Is this happening?” One poor soul on my network has been posting Donald Trump stories at the pace of nearly 90 a day. Does she have a life?
Maybe we should all step back and take a breath. If the morning news is all about whether or not Trump wears a bathrobe when he watches television, (Click), should we be ready to “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them”? (Hamlet, III, i) Perhaps there’s a better way.
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A recent study out of Georgetown University compared the physical benefits for those who took stress management classes and ate well to a group who practiced meditation. Researchers found, “Those who learned to meditate had significantly lower levels of the stress hormone ACTH .. and markers of inflammation ..than those who didn’t.” (“Meditation and Inflammation,” The Week, 2/10/17, pg. 21.) What’s also good news is meditation practice doesn’t need special equipment or sports attire. It can be done any time of the day or night and sitting in silence is free. As any episode of the TV drama Law and Order will tell you, you have a right to remain silent.
