Lucy's cousin, Izaak, with nothing to fear.Nothing to Fear....
Is it just me, or is the world falling apart over a flaming cauldron filled with toxic chemicals?
I keep thinking about this, and the best way I've found to move on when I'm obsessing over something is to "process" the living daylights out of it.
It seems like every time I turn on the radio, there's a story about global warming, animal extinction, pollution, cruelty, lead in kids toys, chaos, war and/or other atrocities. It's overwhelming and depressing. It makes me afraid--for myself and for future generations.
So how do you cope?
I cope by doing what I can to be a responsible global citizen. I recycle. I vote. I think about where I shop and what I buy. I do my best to teach Lucy. Is it enough? Probably not. I need to be doing a lot more. I need to be a more mindful consumer. Will it be enough? Time will tell.
I also cope by thinking about the wretched historical situations that the world has survived tolerably, like radioactivity, and cigarettes. These were once thought healthful, not just harmless.
In Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks (which I really, really liked, by the way), you can read about the crazy (as in, insane) things that people used to do with highly radioactive stuff. I seem to remember that people used to add radium to water as a health drink. I read this book years ago, so I hope I'm forgiven for not remembering perfectly. So... my logic tells me that, if generations made it through past gauntlets, then maybe we can make it through this stuff.
My curiosity got me going and I found a link about the history of radiation. FASCINATING! This is some of the stuff I remember from Uncle Tungsten.
I also try to pay attention to the amazingly good news that is available. There is a lot of good happening around the world, right in there with the bad.
Take Lucy's shunt, for example. To have it adjusted, it's a completely non-invasive procedure. Sure, the setting can also be inadvertently be changed by various strong magnetic sources, but before programmable shunts, if a shunt needed to be adjusted, it meant surgery. Before that, hydrocephalus was "routinely fatal."
I have a friend who adopted a baby, Adam Girum, from Ethiopia in 2007. She told me about a little girl who lived in the same orphanage as Adam (Girum) -- This little girl had hydrocephalus and cried all the time. Her head was enormous and everyone just felt terrible because there was nothing they could do to alleviate the pain. She told me this because she thinks it's amazing that Lucy's neurosurgeon is a mere 20 minutes away from us.
We take A LOT for granted.
