Tonight I watched the News at Ten. It should be renamed the Bad News at Ten. It was one horrible headline after another. All around, the world is in chaos. There is so much suffering. So much terror and injustice. The refugee crisis, our oceans filled with plastic, climate change, animal cruelty, gun and knife crime . . . the list is endless. But it’s not just the news headlines. I watched David Attenborough’s new documentary the other night and it’s hard not to despair.
As a human being, when I see these things I suffer the expected emotions – horror, fear, sadness – but also a sense of shame. And not just shame at how we are treating the inhabitants of our planet, but shame that my own problems are completely insignificant when held in context.
How can I wake up with The Fear when I’m lying in bed, safe and warm, and there are people out there without food or shelter? How can I look in the mirror and feel gloomy about my saggy knees when women younger than me are dying of cancer and it’s a privilege to age? How can I feel sad about not finding my happy ever after when so much of our planet is being destroyed? And how can I even concern myself with my faltering career and failed love life when we have Brexit and Trump?
In short, how dare I complain about my life, when I have so much compared to so many?
The answer is I don’t know.
Truly.
I know all these things to be true, and yet I still feel all of these other things. They jostle alongside each other, like the paradox that life so often is. For so much of the day, I forget about the big stuff. Like most people, I’m just focused on getting through each day and the small stuff that affects my life and those closest around me. But then I’ll hear about some tragedy or watch the news and suddenly I’m reminded again.
I watch a father sobbing at a news conference because the police have found the body of his missing daughter, or hear about a friend of a friend who has just been diagnosed with something awful, and I swear to myself I’ll never complain about anything ever again.
But of course I do. We all do.
Before you know it, you’re annoyed with the person who pushed in front of you in the queue and that your train is late. Or gutted because he didn’t text back or someone else at work got that promotion. Does that make you selfish? I think it just makes you human.
If getting older has taught me one thing, it’s that I feel so many conflicting things about so many different things, and to negate or stifle any of them doesn’t make them go away. Emotions don’t necessarily have a moral compass. Feelings can’t be shamed into disappearing. Suppressing and ignoring them will only make them come back to bite you in the therapist’s chair.
Because this is what I’ve learned:
I can feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and refuse to look in mirrors with overhead lighting, and still go on the Women’s March and roar like a motherfucker. I can weep for that father who lost his daughter and pray for the friend I don’t know, and a few days later be scrolling and despairing that I am not taking beach selfies with my handsome husband. And I can marvel at a sunset and think how lucky I am, and wake up in the night with The Fear.
Because life is complicated. And so are we.
I’m grateful for: