what the world needs NOW...

Sometimes, okay, oftentimes actually. I feel so deeply the sentiment that "this world is just TOO MUCH for me". Sometimes it's too beautiful, so beautiful it hurts. But often it's just too painful in it's uglyness.

Now, I don't read newspapers. And I haven't watched TV (other than occassionally, when on vacation or at other peoples' homes) in over 8 years! These are choices. Conscious choices that I have made to avoid "the media", as much as humanly possible. Once I changed my homepage on my computer to be the Toronto Star Online, so that every morning when I logged on to the internet I would see the day's headlines. That lasted about a month, maybe.

The thing is, I really don't want to come off like a moron when conversing with others about current events. So I try to stay in the loop via CBC radio, which I listen to every morning (even though "Metro Morning" kind of drives me nuts, especially when that dolt Karen Horseman subs in for Andy Barrie, who at least drives me nuts the way your dorky dad might drive you nuts). But "The Current" and "Sounds Like Canada" are often pretty good shows. But still, I have too many days when I just desperately want to turn the radio off - because some days are just too much for me...

Ever since I took my first History class in high school, I have been obsessed with the question "what will the history books fifty, a hundred, or even 500 years from now, say about the time that I am living in, now?"

Well, it would appear that the signs of our times are the internet and student killing rampages. Oh yeah, and a ridiculous war spearheaded by the ridiculous leader of a bully of a country. Bullying - now there's a trend. World leaders do it on an international scale, and yet we're trying to convince our kids not to be bullies? And we care so much about what's cool, and making money, and celebrating violence and indifference through the music we listen to and the TV shows that that we watch, that we forget to just be nice and love each other. And then we wonder why young people break, how they shatter completely, and go out and hurt others... And our response to their violence is talk of the need for more security (what? more guns you mean?) in schools. Because no one wants to admit what the real problem, or rather the root, of all our problems is...

In my humble opinion, the great, huge, unfathomably large, real problems of our world today, all come down to the fact that we do not know how to love. We are scared, hurt, angry, sad and weak... as nations, individuals, as members of families, as employees, as husbands/wives... and from our weaknesses, and that place where we want and need so badly to be loved, but don't know how to give love, or even ask for the love that we need, comes the defensive. The way to conceal our weaknesses is to take power over others. And sadly, too often, this power comes in the form of violence.

This may seem like an overly simplistic diagnosis of all the problems of the world, but contrary to being simple, I think that to work towards rectifying this problem, to work towards solving this problem of the "lack of love" in our world is actually so impossibly huge, it makes me feel a little hopeless sometimes. Sometimes.

But only sometimes.

I have a little article that was published in NOW Magazine the week of September 11th, 2001, and the title is "I Vow To Steer Fear Towards Love". It was written by Rob Brezny. It has been taped to every mirror, in every home I have lived in since it was published. Lest I ever forget my vow to steer fear towards love, always.

Lest we never forget.