One of my faults, a fault that has frequently brought me frustration, is that I have a knack for stripping away the fun in life in favour of focusing on the serious.
I can’t count the number of times I have been in a conversation about a fun, feel-good news story that I have quickly deflated by saying something along the lines of ‘well, I’m glad there’s nobody starving in the world, I’m glad that there aren’t bombs dropping on little children somewhere in the world so we can focus on this silliness.’
It is a personal flaw that I recognize, and I do attempt to stifle much of the time, but it is always there, lurking in the background, causing me to frequently bite my tongue, but not always successfully.
I understand that there is much more to the world that we live in than the problems that face us, either at the local level, or humanity generally. I also understand that we humans need a balance in our lives, and focusing solely on the serious issues impacting our lives while scoffing at anything frivolous or fun is not healthy.
What is healthy, I think, is to detach ourselves from time to time from the harsh realities facing humanity, and instead enjoy some more lighthearted news, to allow ourselves to embrace the quirky, or the silly, if only for a little while in order to maintain some level of positivity, or sanity.
Forest fires, floods, wars, endless and often heated political debate, poverty, homelessness, social injustices, all weigh heavily on my mind each and every day, so it can seem as if we are surrounded by nothing but negativity, though the rational side of my brain understands that there is much more to this world. And in spite of all of the horrors, there are glimmers of joy to be found, and I should allow myself to enjoy that side of life much more.
Balance is important after all.
So, as a generally cranky, jaded ole scribe, I sometimes inwardly bristle when faced with feel-good stories. With so many serious issues far and wide facing humanity, I can sometimes consider the ‘fun things’ that so many enjoy to be nothing more than a distraction from the fact that in our own communities there are people who are hungry, there are folks without housing, there are injustices that are all but ignored.
I frequently find myself frustrated when we focus on fun and frills in our relatively safe, pampered existence here in Canada while ignoring major issues, but I have learned over the years, though I confess I sometimes need to remind myself, that the two can coexist, and that joy, happiness, and even the fun, quirky and silly do indeed coexist with the often depressing reality that surrounds us.
Given the brief background I have described above, you might be able to imagine the large sigh that I could not hold back when I was told that someone would be stopping by our office with a stuffed lobster that was on a cross-country journey in a sort of social experiment to see if it could successfully travel from Prince Edward Island to Alberta while being passed from one stranger to the next along the way.
There was nothing that I wanted less to hear about at that moment, as my own brain was occupied with many of the social issues that face us here at home, and the people that are suffering as a result of our own inaction on the important stuff.
After that initial sigh however, I did what I often do: I bit my lip and put on my best smile, and I braced myself for enduring the overflowing enthusiasm that I was bound to encounter when the stuffed lobster arrived at our office.
As Sorche (who wrote the story about the travelling stuffed lobster; she has a friendlier touch than I do) and I were interviewing Paul and Dominika Kaminski, as their delightful, smiling children (and the red stuffed lobster) looked on, I found myself feeling a little jealous. Paul, who did most of the talking, was, as I had anticipated, very enthusiastic about the journey that this little red lobster had already been on during its trek from Prince Edward Island to Meaford, the adventures that he and his family were looking forward to taking with the lobster before leaving it alone in a public place for anyone to find, and with any luck to help it along to its hopeful and ultimate destination in Alberta. Paul was absolutely oozing with enthusiasm, and I confess, as I mentioned, I was a little jealous that the man standing in front of me could find so much joy and excitement in what my often far too serious brain would have considered on its surface to be just another silly feel-good story that doesn’t do anything to solve the mountain of real problems before us.
The visit from Paul and Dominika Kaminski, along with Lucky the Lobster, reminded me that we ought to be cautious that we don’t give in to the temptation to cling to the serious when faced with the silly, something that I recognize I frequently do. Feel-good stories can be addictive, because, well, because they make us feel good, while the more serious news can leave us feeling depressed, anxious, frustrated, and even sometimes hopeless. So it is not only natural, it is important for our own mental health to allow the fun and silly to creep in and push aside all of that negativity, if only for a little while.
Though I don’t always show it, I do realize that the ‘feel-good’ stories are what help to keep us collectively sane. Without silly stories like a stuffed lobster being passed off from one person to the next on a nation-wide journey, the world would indeed be a much darker place.
