Pause & Reflect: Finding Hope in an Overwhelming World
Life has been feeling like a lot, hasn’t it? There’s so much going on in our cities, states, and countries. We are feeling the pain of countries on the other side of this planet we are all living on. It’s a lot, probably too much for anyone to take in. Perhaps humans weren’t designed to take in all this pain and suffering from everywhere all at once. The constant realities of existing in unprecedented times have taken their toll on the human psyche. Add in a global pandemic that people are acting like is already over, and you have some feeling of life on Earth in 2022.
Photo by Obi - @pixel6propix on Unsplash
Life isn’t all bad though, there is a lot to celebrate. While it’s easier to focus solely on what’s going wrong, it takes an ingrained sense of hope to look on the brighter side of things,
even if you have to squint to see the silver lining.
Over at The Compassion Museum, we believe in humans experiencing and demonstrating compassion on a deeper level. However, before humans can show compassion to each other, we must first show compassion to ourselves. What does compassion for self look like? Terms like “self care” have become a part of mainstream vernacular, to the point that their meaning may be all but forgotten. If you look online, folks brag about how they are taking care of themselves physically, spiritually, and emotionally. That’s all well and good, but are we taking care of ourselves because it’s the right thing to do or because it’s trendy? That’s a question that only you can answer, but that’s not what we are here to discuss.
Here at The Compassion Museum, we have a set of core values that we seek to live by in our quest to create experiences that awaken humans to deeper levels of compassion. (And, it requires us to practice putting them into action - again and again.) The one that we are going to talk about today is pausing and reflecting.
Photo by Wayne Lee-Sing on Unsplash
Remember how as children we hated to slow things down? Hitting the pause button on a movie or video game was so irritating! Now that we are adults, we relish in the ability to hit pause because the opportunity to do so isn’t always available.
We live in a time where we literally have the world at our fingertips. We are more connected with our fellow humans around the globe in a way that wasn’t possible just a few decades ago. You want to know what’s going on in England? You can do that. What’s Tokyo up to? You can Google that too. The access to information without gatekeepers is both a blessing and a curse. Once you turn on the faucet from the limitless entity that is the internet, it’s hard to turn it off. But for our own health and the sake of our neighbors, it’s something that we have to do.
If you’ve watched even an iota of news, then you are familiar with the phrase “unprecedented times.” It seems like there is always something happening in this wacky world of ours. Breaking news can literally break into your day at any moment. In times like this, there is only one thing I feel I can do: go outside. There’s something different about letting the sun come in direct contact with your skin, something about actually touching the grass. The outside world is a reminder that with all the things that are going and can go wrong, there is still some beauty in this world. And we need this reminder more than ever.
For the past three weeks, I‘ve been getting up at between 7AM and 8AM to go walking around my neighborhood. I walk three laps which total a little over a mile.
I make it a non-negotiable ritual that I have to walk the first lap without my headphones in.
There’s nothing wrong with music or podcasts, but there’s also nothing wrong with taking in the sounds of my neighborhood first. During this first lap I listen to the birds chirp, the insects making their sounds, and breathing in the fresh air of a beautiful new morning. I get it, maybe you aren’t much of a morning person or a walking person, and that’s fine. If it’s at all possible, find a way to go outside and either leave your phone at home or put it on vibrate.
Another good way to pause and reflect is to keep a journal.
Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash
I’ve found a great way to pause and reflect is to journal. Whether you call it a diary or a journal, the important thing is to find a space away from your normal distractions and write. Just write. Journal as if no one will ever read it except yourself. How freeing is that? To write out your innermost feelings and not have to worry about the opinion of others? But the beautiful thing about journaling, besides having a safe non-judgmental place to express yourself, is that it makes you slow down and think. In order to fill up a journal, you have to write about what you experienced. In order to write about said experiences, you have to recall what you did. Today, we are so busy we can barely remember what we had for lunch. A whole week can pass and it will feel like it flew by without any memorable moments to speak of. That isn’t living, that’s just existing.
There are so many ways to pause and reflect. Pick up a book you’ve never read before, visit the library, or take up a hobby you’ve never had time for. Life is going to continue to run at full speed, but you don’t have to. Actually, it’s imperative that you don’t. There’s nothing wrong with pausing this thing that we call life and sitting and reflecting.
Who are we and what do we want? We are the only ones who can answer those questions, but the answers won’t come until we take the time to pause and reflect.
