Dear Editor,
This last week after a steady diet of international news, I decided to have an enforced period of abstinence. Like some meals I consume without an awareness of their nutritional value, the details of news via television, radio or print have at times a detrimental effect.
That is my contention at least, after consuming the tragic events in Israel, Gaza, and eastern Ukraine in recent weeks. A week without consciously reading or listening to the news has, I believed, returned me to some sense of internal calm.
News reports have the capacity to provoke incredible outrage, anger and depression as if a large cloud has begun to hover above, despite the real presence of a perfectly blue sky in the middle of the summer.
The death of hundreds in consciously devised plans made me question the motivations of the combatants and the morality of their political convictions.
In attempts to resolve what at times appear to be intractable problems, anger and depression are not helpful states of mind at whatever level. The two states mirror our fight or flight responses in periods of panic, states in which ongoing problems are not resolved.
Only calm people, I believe, who have their panic under control, have the capacity to wade through emotion-laden history without casting aspersions or assigning blame. That is the only way, I believe, an atmosphere of reconciliation can in due time be created. The word patience, I interpret, as the discipline of keeping intense emotions in awareness but under control.
George Jason