The feeling of hopelessness within the world seems to be at an all-time high lately. Between natural disasters, people dying, senseless shootings, and opinion after opinion after opinion on anything and everything because that’s what we do – we hop on our social media platforms and barrage the world with our thoughts – never necessarily having to take ownership for anything because we’re just a click away from deleting it all or logging off.
Anyway… I needed to do some soul searching due to the information bombardment and what I felt like it was doing to my soul as it was not only sucking me dry mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, it was depriving my family of me – present, engaged, fully in tune me – which isn’t good. It’s not good for me, and it’s not good for you either.
I took stock as I so often do. I thought about how the information was feeling overwhelming and causing me to be anxious about life which in reality I really shouldn’t be anxious about because we’re all good. We’re healthy thriving people, and somehow in the midst of this goodness all around me I felt bad because I was overdosing on the negativity of others. We should absolutely be sympathetic towards others and their plights, but there is a fine line. When we continuously process all of the “others” pain and heartache we become stunted in our own relationships as our purpose and ability to be present becomes nonexistent because we’re so engaged in what else is going on in the world. It’s the woman out for coffee with a long lost friend who can’t put her phone down. It’s the dad at his son’s football game who can’t stop texting someone. It’s the mom checking out Instagram as her daughter banters for attention (guilty). It’s in these moments where we must put the phone down, turn off the Television, or let the battery die on our tablet. Seriously. This is when the “all knowing” has crossed a line. Instead of being able to help the world because of our vast piles of information, we actually hinder the process of joy and kindness as we are no longer able to even display these simple traits within our own small tribes because we’re so consumed with humanity as a whole instead of the individuals within our homes.
I gathered all of these thoughts and made some changes which I will discuss in depth next week, but for this post, you get to be a part of one small change. We had family pizza night on Sunday. Now, this isn’t necessarily unique in our family as we eat a lot of pizza but what was unique was the process we engaged in as a family to get to pizza night. Ryan and a few of the kids ventured down to the garden to pick the few remaining tomatoes and peppers from this year’s crop. Mya helped make the dough. Mabel painted garlic oil on top of crusty bread for bruschetta. Many hands helped chop up the topping options and make sauce. Annabelle assisted in picking basil from the planter. It was a community effort as we all pitched in as a family, making our pizzas, being present together on the deck, laughing, eating, and being in the moment which is so incredibly rare nowadays.
I’ll have the dough and sauce recipe on the blog in the next day or two and yes, I am slowly rising out of the fog of infancy as my baby is now two and a half, and I plan to digress quite a bit more on this blog if I still have any people interested in my ramblings. If not, guess we’ll call it a journal 😉 AND – a big congratulations to Melanie King who won the copy of LOVEDbaby! Message me and I’ll get it in the mail.
Just keep livin!