The last few days I have done something that I haven’t done in years. I have stopped watching the news. Lately it has been a constant source of frustration for me, and I have found that just turning it off is so much more peaceful than watching it. Last night I decided that I would watch a classic 1960 film instead: “The Magnificent Seven” with Steve McQueen, Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, and Lee Marvin. It was a move I loved as a kid and you know what? Now that I’m 64, I found that I remembered almost nothing about the movie. It was wonderful. It is about small Mexican town that is sacked every year by a band of evil bandits, its leader played by Eli Wallach. The town gathers up all of its meager wealth and hires seven gun fighters to protect their little village.
With movies you can choose to watch films where the good guys always win, unlike in real life. It isn’t likely that I will watch The Deer Hunter again or Sophie’s Choice, because those films end in unspeakable tragedy.
I can’t however, bring myself to watch Hallmark Christmas movies alone. But I will resolve not to complain when my sweet wife Lori watches them. She needs a relief from the world of reality too. I have to say it and I promise I won’t take it back. Even Hallmark Christmas movies are better than watching the news right now.
A few days ago, I ran across a post I had put on Facebook that I had forgotten about. It is something I borrowed from someone else and it goes like this:
“Worry, is a conversation you have with yourself about things you cannot change.
Prayer, is a conversation you have with God, about things he CAN change.”
I had resolved not to write about politics and I have started and stopped writing several times, deleted everything I had written and started over. It weighs heavy on my heart that we are a deeply divided nation right now. There is little dialogue. It occurred to me that we are dug in so deep in our own foxhole if anybody throws a political grenade it is likely to just roll back in and do harm to us and those around us.
Let’s find things that unite us and concentrate on them, rather than looking for things that divide us. I know it’s hard, but the scariest thing we face is the fear of the unknown. I’ve used the following examples before in my column a few times but both are worth repeating now.
The first is a quote that I had always thought was attributed to President Abraham Lincoln and I have always thought about the enormous burden the Presidency placed on the great man during the Civil war when he viewed both sides of the conflict as Americans. However, the quote itself is attribute to Mark Twain in a 1934 edition of Readers Digest. But was earlier credited to “anonymous” in on September 11, 1910. Whoever said it doesn’t really matter. It is still true:
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
The other quote is a twoword phrase that appears in the Bible 365 times. Once for every day in the year. It is simply this: “Fear not.”
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