Sometimes my life is so easy, I can’t believe my good fortune. Maybe you know what I mean.
I read the newspaper or listen to the news on the radio and our world seems sick, terminally ill, the turf of madmen. But then I go outside and sit in the pasture with our sheep. There’s no war there, no car bombs are exploding. It’s peaceful. My sheep have grass to eat and water to drink. The sheep come up to me, give me a sniff, breathe their sweet sheep-breath on me.
I think the sheep are lucky because they don’t listen to the news.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not bad-mouthing "The Media." In my (now former) job as a newspaper photographer, I was a cog in the wheel that is The Media. For 25 years I was one of those folks whose job it is to inform you about your world. Today, when I hear disturbing news, I am not one of those who is inclined to blame the messenger.
I do think, however, that there can come a point where perhaps we are too aware of man's inhumanity to man. There can come a point where we're afraid to go outside, to travel to another neighborhood, another country.
There is a lot out there, outside our door, that is scary to us. A friend recently loaned us the book Beyond the Sky and the Earth, where Jamie Zeppa writes about the three years she lived in Bhutan. The author knows from personal experience how fear can cripple us: "We become a prisoner in a room full of what-if."
