How Do We Stay Sane in a World Gone Nuts?

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How do we stay sane in a world gone nuts?  

Maybe life was always this chaotic, but we just didn’t realize it.  Perhaps 24-hour news cycles and instant social media capture of the nightmare of the day has taken the cap off our insularity and demands, “Look at this. See each horrific moment. Step out of self-delusion. Wake up! Do something meaningful.” 

Perhaps, we have so intensely turned away from reality that the universe is fed up with our perceiving the world with blinders on and is throwing all this at us at once to try, at long last, to teach us how to live, how to love, and how to take care of each other.  I hope that is so, but what I witness is people devolving under the weight of uncertainty.

Unremitting uncertainty and irrationality can make a person anxious. The more anxious we become, the less in control we feel. The less in control we feel, the more defensive and rigid we can become. The more rigid we become, the more angry and resentful.  The more we believe we are right and “they” are wrong, the more we become incapable of perceiving a variety of options to work our way out of problems and challenges.

Thus, we become increasingly myopic, belligerent, destabilized, angry, and afraid. Not a healthy way of being for ourselves, those who interact with us and the quality of crucial decisions we may make while under the spell of such fragmentation.

So, how do we stay sane in a world gone nuts?

What’s the answer?

How do we stay sane, loving, caring, creative and able to cope? Because staying frozen is not the answer. Ranting and blaming is toxic. Turning to hate is dehumanizing.  Pretending that none of this bothers you places you in deep denial.

The only way I know is to start with myself.

I start small and identify how my anxiety is distorting my possibilities, my creativity as well as my humanity. And, then I call myself out for choosing to stay in a mindset of defeat and helplessness.

Moment by moment I have to remind myself that yes, the world can be random and terrifying, but it is my mind and my perceptions that interpret whether I can survive and even thrive in such a world. I can’t change the world but perhaps by altering how I respond to it I can make a small difference. And, a small difference can have enormously positive consequences.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

– Henry Ford