Events, Issues, Attitudes

Life is pretty much in three lay­ers. Events hap­pen. Issues arise from the events and are debated. Behind every set of eyes is a series of atti­tudes. The atti­tude layer has to do with soul and spirit. Issues are intel­lec­tual ways of look­ing at events. Events hap­pen on their own (usu­ally the result of only a few peo­ple or less). They are out­side of us. 9/11 was an event. Issues relat­ing to it have been debated ever since. What is missed or ignored has to do with the atti­tudes of the debates. After all, when the spir­i­tual world is denied, the empha­sis is placed on find­ing some imag­i­nary final way of debat­ing out the issues. A num­ber of polit­i­cal pun­dits make a good liv­ing doing this. The rest of us have to suf­fer through the spirit by which they do it.

The major­ity of events are really not all that impor­tant in the eter­nal scheme of things. The “issues” debates around such events are a form of men­tal cal­is­then­ics. The final analy­sis has to do with the atti­tude you have through it all. What endures is the soul — the spirit — the atti­tude. The rest passes into final his­tor­i­cal obliv­ion. Ther­a­pists and insti­tu­tions of atti­tu­di­nal heal­ing (churches, syn­a­gogues, etc.) exist to deal with the ulti­mate atti­tude layer of the human psy­che (but are often lost in the “issues” fias­cos). How we see what hap­pens is every bit as impor­tant as what hap­pens. Events are “ink blots” for the soul to express itself. Notice how angry peo­ple react angrily; para­noid peo­ple know it must all be a plot; trust­ing peo­ple endure it grace­fully; the spir­i­tu­ally mature wait for all of the facts to come in and find for­give­ness where it is possible.

We have no con­trol over events. Issues debates eas­ily become an addic­tion with no resolve. It is our atti­tude that truly mat­ters most — because it works in all direc­tions. It eval­u­ates the sig­nif­i­cance of an event; it looks for a pre­ferred “take” on the event-created issues; it finds rest within the chaos and cre­ates a way of find­ing mean­ing in even the worst of tragedies. Per­son­ally, I find most issues debaters emo­tion­ally bru­tal. They tend to spir­i­tu­ally blud­geon rather than con­vince through rea­son or his­tor­i­cal research. This sets the tone for the times (a mass media effect). In the end, it is more impor­tant to them to find some­one to blame than to under­stand fully what has hap­pened and what has to be done.

Being “in the world but not of the world” makes more sense to me all of the time. I keep up with the “news” a lit­tle bit to see what is tossed to the masses as impor­tant. What I mon­i­tor most is the take I have on what is sent. Do I let myself be manip­u­lated? Will I fall into a blam­ing and sham­ing atti­tude? Will I main­tain the abil­ity to keep a lov­ing atti­tude through it all? I can­not con­trol events or the issues debates that fol­low, but I can choose to see through it all with an eter­nally pos­i­tive and hope­ful attitude.