Contagious

The flu sea­son has been over for a few weeks, but you still have to be care­ful about other con­ta­gious dis­eases. New grand­par­ents often dis­cover that they get to go through a few rounds of child­hood ill­nesses with their grand­chil­dren just like they did with their own chil­dren. Those of us that live alone get to skip most of those mis­eries, but we too have to be care­ful to wash our hands and avoid close con­tact. Com­mon sense will help your anti­body sys­tem more than good vit­a­mins alone.

There are other things even more con­ta­gious that are emo­tional or spir­i­tual in nature (and are the processes that I find most inter­est­ing). Fear is con­ta­gious but so is laugh­ter. Feel­ings flow through pop­u­la­tions faster than any virus. Eighty-thousand rock fans at a con­cert will share the same feel­ings almost instantly. The same is true for mil­lions watch­ing a tele­vised movie. You can see the same thing hap­pen on a smaller scale in a restau­rant, a church, or even in a noisy bowl­ing alley.

When it comes to emo­tional responses you can pick and choose a lit­tle bit. You can cause the men­tal “virus” to mutate. Over the years, I have found that I can turn just about any neg­a­tive emo­tion into some form of pos­i­tive humor. The feel­ing may come to me as dis­dain or even hatred, but once my spir­i­tual sys­tem has worked it through, it may just become the joke of the cen­tury. It takes a lit­tle per­spec­tive to do this. You can­not change the pri­mary events, but you sure can choose how you digest them.

Turn­ing tragedy into com­edy requires a pro­found phi­los­o­phy of life. There is irony in just about every human action and para­dox in every ele­ment of nature. Tell me your take on an event and I can see inside your soul for just a moment. Fear begets shal­low fear. Humor has a base grounded deep in the soul. Com­edy or tragedy? It is your call. Be care­ful what you pass along, it just might spread through­out the world.