As usual, Bob Herbert’s column in the Tuesday, June 1 New York Times is an expression of my thoughts and emotions. I find myself deeply distracted from my work by the state of the world.
And yet I will write today – enter revisions into my netbook (a recent purchase that caused an influx of positive emotion) in the shade at the Chicago Botanic Gardens (an environment that deeply nurtures my soul).
But I will not forget the helplessness that I feel in relation to the state of the world. It is the one area of life in which optimism may not be realistic, certainly not heartfelt. But Herbert’s pinpointing of helplessness as linked to despair is pinpoint-accurate.
And long ago Martin Seligman pinpointed learned helplessness as one of the crucial problems in what he perceived to be an epidemic of childhood depression.
That’s about all I have to say today. If you are reading this, you have the intellect, and emotional perceptiveness, to read between the lines and link the dots.
Sometimes we just have to do the best we can.
