The hardest thing to do in this world is live in it

That’s a roundabout quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, years ago. When I first heard it, I thought it a silly quote, but it didn’t take long for it to dawn on me just how true it is.

If we’re not destroying ourselves with toxic gases, we’re either blowing each other up, or shooting one another to death. We’re trying to take what isn’t ours, show our ‘superiority’, claim dominance, declare independence, publicly display our dirty laundry, turn blind eyes or threaten and control the masses with spoken or unspoken words.

In the midst of all this ridiculous chaos, everyday normal folk, folk like you and me, have to live in it and with it. We’re bombarded with all of this doom and gloom day in day out. We’re brainwashed into seeing just how bad it is to actually live in this world.

I think today I started to believe it.

Apparently, in December, we came to within a hair’s breadth of being eradicated out of existence. A massive meteor exploded over one of the oceans, away from prying eyes, but not that away. It has recently been discovered, so someone’s seen it. It was probably deemed unwise to tell us about it before the event; or maybe it was fed out to some of us but not all, and was swallowed up with some other gloomy scenario; or maybe there’s only so much bad news we can constantly be drip-fed.

I said I think today I started to believe it. I then thought again.

The world is a big place. The events we are being bombarded with are small in comparison. Even trivial to take things to the extreme. Next week something else will replace them, equally so important that we must be told about it every five minutes.

It’s no wonder our minds are warping when we’re given the ins and outs of every little detail from one side of the coin, and told not to share or discuss it on the other. Or we aren’t given the full facts, and then allowed to let our minds wander and fill in the gaps. Or we’re told what is right and wrong to think. All subtly, obviously. Major negativity needs to be subtle.

My. My mind has wandered. I blame the headache. In this country, smoking in the workplace is banned. Some of my colleagues think that doesn’t include e-cigarettes, so they smoke them in the office, even though they’ve been told that too is banned. I can’t stand the smell of them. They give me headaches. I mention it. I see blind eyes turn.

Toxic gases. Selfish people. Two sides of the coin. One world.

The hardest thing to do in this world is live in it.

But live in it I must.

I refuse to be swallowed up in the charged quagmire that I’m apparently living in. I focus on the positives I can find, when I can find them. Headache or not. I take myself off to my Place of Peace and Tranquility when I get the chance. I wrap myself in words; in imagination; in colour; in art; in creativity.

Someone negative will say I’m living with my head buried in the sand.

I say to them I’m living in my world. And my world may be flawed, it may be little, it may be confusing, but it’s fantastic. My positives outweigh any negative that is thrown at me. My light grows brighter in my world, and sometimes it’s good to just let it out.

Let it go.

And that goes for the negatives too.