Living with Fear and Grief

Living with Fear and Grief

Every day I recognize a cold knot of fear in my gut, often deeply entangled with a flood of grief. Perhaps you do too?

Like so many of you, I struggle to figure out how to be helpful in these frightening times. How can I help protect our relationships, our communities, and our fundamental values? Many of us feel powerless at the attacks on our familiar social and political institutions and practices.

There are many possible responses to that terrible fear and grief. Two show up daily - in the news, of course- and in my life: There is the understandable impulse to explode in rage at those who lead and approve the destructive attacks and the horrifying fear-mongering. Venting may give some temporary emotional relief, but matching trash talk with their trash talk pours out more toxic energy into our world.

The second common response is to tune out via denial and deflection, sometimes silently and sometimes not. That response also offers temporary relief from that knot of cold terror, but in the end it leads to accommodation and defeat.

I ask myself every day, what can I, an elderly member of a small rural community, do? I can support our local and not-so-local circles of care and protection. I can encourage everyone I know to stay grounded in reality, to nourish and make real their own visions of how to live well, and to practice deep calm in these extremely turbulent times.

The Dalai Lama often says, "My religion is kindness." I would add, "And kindness is my practice and my way of life."

And you?