The Ostrich… by JoAnn

Every time I watch the news on television or read about current events online, I can’t help but feel defeated. I feel an overall defeat for the USA and the entire world.

I know times are constantly changing and have been for hundreds of years. But for the 60+ years I have lived on this planet Earth, things have not just changed but progressively grown worse. Or so it feels to me and most of the friends I have that are my age.

I have a good friend who constantly updates me about the Biblical significance of everything happening in the world. She refuses to listen to any news shared by way of television and does her own research online to find what she feels is the real, unfiltered truth. As you can imagine, she has been a busy bee since all the horrific happenings in Israel.

I, too, feel my friend’s pain and heartache. Only I cannot tolerate listening to or reading about it all on a daily basis as she does. It truly hurts my mental state to the point that I feel I am in jeopardy because I have suffered with chronic depression my entire life. I work daily to keep my mental health in a good way.

Much of that work includes avoiding things that are triggers. Things that I know will upset, worry, and sadden me on a deep level. A level that may put me into a dive I cannot control. My friend knows and understands my plight. She has learned to give me just enough information to be sure that I know the truth about what is going on in the world, but not enough that I cannot handle the information. I love her for that and appreciate having a friend like her.

With the news coming out of Israel as of late, I have found many other people are responding much like myself. They do want the truth but in manageable bits. The pertinent details are necessary for our own safety and education but not enough to give us anxiety that hinders our everyday lives.

Another close friend raised the question of when do we know we are educating ourselves enough. She explained that how she truly wants to react is to be like an Ostrich and bury her head in the sand. That statement rang a bell for me. God knows there have been many times in my life that I took on that Ostrich role. I’ll be the first to admit that it felt so good to totally ignore all that was making me feel the anxiety and depression I was going through at the time. To simply pretend the problem wasn’t there. Of course, that is not a healthy way to go about any situation. But for those for whom the process of accepting is so very painful and matters so much to them that it literally hurts, it is a huge temptation.

The bottom line, we cannot be Ostriches! If we choose that option, it will serve no positive purpose for ourselves or anyone else. So now, if I do decide to read the daily news or listen to my favorite news anchor on TV, I will try my best to take in as much as I can for educational purposes only and will file it away for future reference. But if it gets so bad that I am thinking about that Ostrich, I will turn the TV, or my laptop, off and try again another day. God help us all.