I have been tired this week. The time change always gets me. So it didn’t hit me right away that I wasn’t listening much to the news. But by the end of the week, when I finally turned on the radio, I realized I was behind the times, as they say. My first instinct was to turn the news off again.
It’s called compassion fatigue. That point where you just have had it, you can’t listen to one more sad thing. You start watching TV shows with happy endings. You experience incredible helplessness and frustration at the seemingly endless bad news. Add to that a pandemic that won’t quit and a war that is in its third week, and turning off the news seems the only sane strategy.
How informed do we really have to be anyway? What is the extent of our moral obligation? How do we deal with our own life frustrations and the tragedies of the world?
When we feel like this it means our sometimes shaky reserves for coping are depleted. That is an indication that it is time to rest. And that is okay. We need to rest, we need to breathe in some peace, we need to re-establish a sense of balance and remind ourselves the extent of our responsibilities. Take time for that if you need it.
And then come back to reality. Choose some ways you can help. Let go of any need to fix it or control it, whatever “it” is. Every day do an act of kindness. Every day say a prayer for peace. Every day do one thing to care for yourself. Balance. You can’t change the craziness but you can do some small things that make it more bearable.
We can teach and model peace. We can bring kindness into the world. We can care for those we love and those we don’t know. We can suspend judgement and practice compassion. Never underestimate the power of love and God’s willingness to take everything we offer and make it good.