Keeping inspired and hopeful despite bad news

I woke up this morning to another radio news report of a huge layoff and bad economic statistics and found myself just wanting to turn off the radio. I believe it’s important to know what’s going on around the world, but too much bad news makes me weak.

All this week, I’ve been forcing myself to write scripts for the videos I will make today about my books that I will release for free online. I’ve been avoiding writing about what really inspires me and what I have dedicated almost eight months to. Why? It’s not that I don’t like my books or believe in their messages: how to travel the world on a budget and learn foreign languages easily using music. It’s not that I am a lazy person.

It’s that I find it hard to awake my own inspiration when all I hear around me is about destruction and elimination. Jobs are cut. Somali Muslim boys disappear from Minneapolis back to Somalia to fight jihad.. More warplanes are going somewhere to bomb something else. The Turkish leader storms off the stage at the Davos Economic Forum instead of engaging in dialogue.

I’ve also spent a great deal of energy defending my political views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to other Jews who either tell me I shouldn’t mention I am Jewish when criticizing Israel or that I have a birth defect because I defend Muslims and don’t uphold Jewish self-preservation. (How someone can send me an email with the subject “you exemplify a birth defect in our people” and expect me to actually converse with him seriously is beyond my comprehension.) Another one asked me to call her to have a conversation on the topic, but instead launched into a one hour breathless monologue about her life story and then interrupted me when I was giving my point of view.

Instead of creating, I am defending. That is not where I want my energy to go.

I see no creation and what I am doing is launching a book series called “Create Your World” and much of what I hear and see is about quite the opposite.

I do think the human soul is capable of great things despite hardships and pressure around them. I often wonder about how Russian poets, musicians, composers and writers created some of the most heralded and respected works of art in the Western World despite living under tyrannical rule, in horrible weather conditions and eating bland food that probably lacks all the nutrients they needed. I have yet to tap into this reserve of spirit and energy that can surpass darkness.