While building a fire in the wood stove, I was crumpling up newspaper and dropping it into the bottom of the stove. There is a science to this mindless task; first, the piece of paper is laid out flat, then rolled into a ball that traps lots of air between the maze of folds created by the rumpling.
If I let myself read what’s on these pages I get “involved” and it takes forever to get the fire lit. So, while doing this task I adhere to a rule: don’t read the papers that you’re using to build the fire. A while back, I broke my rule!
As I was opening the page, a headline caught my attention. There had been some tragedy, emergency, crisis, devastation, etc. which was going to produce misery for most of the world. After reading the whole story, I was drained. The world was falling apart, perhaps terminally, and there was nothing anyone was doing to stop it. I got that sick feeling that I get when there’s an impending problem that I haven’t yet figured a way to fix.
Finally, the cold house brought me back to the moment and I resumed building the fire. The cold house was something that I could fix, at least today. Tomorrow, after the impending cataclysm I might not. As I began to crumple the sheet of newspaper that contained the troubling story, a small detail that I had missed in my first reading caught my eye. In the corner of the page was the date: 1989. The paper I was crumpling was more than twenty years old.
What a fool—I had let a twenty plus year old news story wreck me. Almost immediately, another thought came to me: back in 1989 I had missed this story. This event, which promised to end life on planet earth, or at least the part of it that I inhabit, had come and gone without my knowing, or having produced any effect that I ever felt.
The next piece of paper I pulled out of the bin was dated 2011 and my eye was instantly caught by another headline that promised to end life as…
Stop, “Fool me twice…” no thanks.
How much of my emotional, intellectual and physical energy is wasted by worrying about things that have been deliberately set in my path for the purpose of capturing my attention? How many crises, tragedies, devastations, catastrophes (hyperbole is apparently the only literary device now taught to the chattering class) have come and gone without becoming critical, tragic, devastating, or catastrophic?
I think my naturally compassionate nature is being manipulated…I don’t like to be manipulated; it creates crises of faith, devastates my emotional wellbeing, and carries the potential for catastrophic fits of callousness. Oh really…please!
I think I need to make another “rule”. From now on, I’m going be much harder to fool, just like our Anchor Point graduates.
Maybe just one more rule: I’m going to work harder at fixing those things that are important and that I can do something about.
[i] Anchor Points is the summer long program at Camp Eagle Wing for sixteen year olds. The Anchor Point summer provides training in a host of areas and, as campers themselves report, “The best summer of my life.” APs spend several hours a week with Eagle Wing’s Founder, Chick BeVier; discussing stories from his new book, Because We Don’t Sail Alone and, in the process, work toward one of the primary goals of the Anchor Point experience”: become hard to fool!