It’s All BLEEP

Recently, a dear friend said to me, “It’s all BLEEP.” You can fill in the blank with whatever profanity you feel, just like Madlibs. They’re not in a very good place and they feel very stuck there, and I would venture to guess, based on national trends in wellbeing and mental health, that many of us feel the same way. 

But I don’t. 

I used to. I used to spend a lot of time preoccupied with current events. I was well informed and rather depressed about the state of the world. Many people feel it’s important to stay tuned into the news cycle and I used to feel the same, but I don’t anymore. I realized the news was making me sick with stress, that it is intentional, and that while I feel for every person enduring hardship featured in every single news story everywhere else in the world, the reality is that I can do very little for them. 

I think a more productive way to operate is by choosing causes I actually want to participate in and act on, and doing as much good in those areas on a local level as possible. That doesn’t mean I can’t also try to affect international causes. If I want to donate to organizations that support foreign aid, I can do that simply by searching for them on the internet. I do not have to watch endless hours of the news cycle about every hardship in every corner of the globe in order to make a difference. In fact, being incapacitated by stress and fear, which is a byproduct of obsessing over the news, makes me less useful and less motivated to participate in my local community. 

One of the byproducts of having faith, on the other hand, is getting to know ourselves better from a place of stability and eventually maybe even certainty. If we approach faith with a willingness to believe that we are worthy of good and positive outcomes and the wackadoo notion that maybe, just maybe, there is some all wonderful force of Good out there in the world working in our favor if we work with it (see Star Wars: The Force for more information), we start to keep our eye out for any sprinkling of Good in otherwise dark times.

In my experience, that BLEEP only builds upon itself, and it leads to all kinds of important internal stabilization and revelations if we literally keep the faith. As my faith has evolved, I have felt much more comfortable asking for more, setting boundaries, committing to my own goals, releasing bad habits, and believing that everything works out for the best even in difficult times.

This spiritual cleaning house, if you will, has in turn helped me get a better sense of who I actually am, rather than who I think I should be according to others and what I want and need to feel safe and loved in this lifetime. None of it has been easy, but it has been easier with some semblance of faith. 

And I genuinely feel like all of this is a prerequisite to determining purpose or meaning. I’ve been searching for ways to make me feel grounded and purposeful my whole life, and it has been a bloody painful search. This version of faith, which is basically becoming a devout believer in Good and my worthiness of a happy, healthy, loving life, has been something I have been seeking since adolescence. Living without it has been a struggle. But now that I have it, I feel better equipped to choose some passions and commit to them completely. 

This, I think, is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to the world’s problems. Many of us are spending a lot of time obsessing over what is wrong with the world without actually doing anything about them, beyond making ourselves and each other sick with stress. 

If we are passionate about a foreign war, real action involves calling or writing to Congress about the issue. But how many of us are doing that?

If we are upset about the opioid crisis, real action includes volunteering for substance abuse prevention programs. But how many of us are actually doing that? 

I think our inaction is a symptom of faithlessness. It is a symptom of our lack of belief in God (or Good). If there is a God, how could we possibly have war or overdose deaths? some people might wonder, not realizing that God (and Good) is in the actions we take to influence our environment and enact change to prevent such profound hardships. God, I think, is in the collective Good. As human beans, we have the opportunity to be expressions of a Universal Good and our actions to help, particularly in our local communities, are kind of the only thing that matters.