This is a bit of a rant directed at irrational fear, ignorance, and cognitive dissonance and could probably viewed in series with my earlier thread about bitterness and how those issues are ruining the lives of the people around me and those I interact with.
I grew up in Italy. Well no, that's not really correct, I was born in Alabama and grew up in Georgia but the formation of my life philosophy was really saturated in good Italian wine and the odd morning cornetto. See, the Italians in my opinion have life figured out in that life is viewed as a series of moments, of beautiful pictures no matter the mood, that each one is a special thing to be shared with friends and family and made better with good company, good cuisine, and the warm body of someone next to you. When I came to Italy I was just some poor schmuck who had signed on for a tour in Italy but came to appreciate a culture with their stress levels turned way down. Most of all, I came by the fond Italian expression va bene which essentially means "very well." Va bene captures the Italian mindset in some ways in that it says the big problems, the ones we have no control over are to be acknowledged but not to be worried about.
Now pause right there. That doesn't mean that you give up your crusades, it doesn't mean you become lazy, it just means that you take it from a realistic perspective. Can I change the world with one action? Am I some adventurer like James Bond, ready to fight and change the world in a hail of bullets? No, no way. Can I change minds, can I be a part of something greater than myself but still have those moments that make us human? Absolutely.
"Va bene" is so contrary to the mindset so many of us seem to have to day. Every news article spells a short term doom, every new piece of science offers us Armageddon, every small societal ill spells the fall of Rome, and every political blurp is the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy. It seems that every thing in this world is now poised to send the earth spinning off its axis deep into the jaws of the Phantom Zone. If its not my Mom spinning the woes of Social Security, or my Father-in-Law and the shadow government, its the guy on the street corner preaching "the End is Nigh." Yet any reasonable student of history can see that "imminent doom" has been the watch words of the world weary for centuries but now you can Twitter the creaking trusses of the collapse.
Tone it down. Yeah, that's right, tone it down. Try this next time you feel like the world is burning around you. Turn off the computer and the phone and the television and go sit outside for a few minutes. Take a glass of wine and your favorite e-juice and spend an hour in the dying light of the day and listen closely for the bugs to come out. If you live in the city, go to an art museum and view the utter beauty of the human condition draped across the walls. Go put your feet in the sand and feel the water come up over your toes. Yes, the world is going to be as screwed up as it was when you left, but maybe you'll be able to see that despite all of that, there is still something here worth saving.
I see the guys with their signs emblazoned with portents of doom and it makes me want to ask when the last time they woke up on their day off and just went back to sleep in that warm bed. Or when was the last time they had a pleasant conversation with a good friend. I feel bad for those people, those naysayers of doom. Those cats and kittens who have given up on their world and are ready just to watch it all burn.
Most of all I just want to tell them, "va bene"
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