We are turning the page from 2020 to 2021. In contrast to a year ago, dark moods prevail. Except for where the light shines.
What is the light? This has been a year of doubts, fears, never-before-seen forced attacks on our nation’s Constitutional Republic. Citizens, cities and businesses have suffered economic attacks and setbacks unrelated to the prior vigorous health of the economy. Most of the inalienable rights enumerated in the Constitution have been jeopardized and infringed upon to shocking degrees. No one has been spared the consequences, directly or indirectly.
In the midst of storms, trials, difficulties, wars, the only coping mechanism (not an easy one), is to cling to light. Often that light is nothing more than hope. Without truthful information to encourage, hope itself loses hope. Think of what POWs endure, or populations stuck in never-ending wars, with no idea if and when freedom will ever come. Their hardships are likely physical as well as psychological. Americans have been spared most of those experiences, and also the lessons. Emotions strain to the breaking point, or must be numbed in order to endure. Many are at that point as we end 2020, without the just-described situational extremes. Coping skills are low.
The question to ask is, “Where is Light?” How do we find it? For that answer we must often look to the past. WHEN did things feel better? And WHY? What changed? How can we recapture what illuminated our path and our mood before? Feeling free to go out when we felt like it? Dining out with friends or family? Accomplishments and interactions at schools and work? The freedom to think and speak (in a civil manner) without fear of reprisal? Especially for inane reasons? The list is long.
Who or what is responsible for robbing us of positivity? Look carefully. The media has always known how to manipulate moods through the subjects they dwell on and the music they use for background. Watch a frightening movie scene without sound and the effect of fear is very much less, or even absent. Try it. Watch an uplifting movie, or a good comedy, and the aftermath is completely different. Who is dictating the narrative? Who is running (and ruining) your life?
One sure clue as to where light is not found is in the sensation of FEAR. Fear is destructive. And deceit is its bedfellow. Fear is the most powerful tool for manipulating people. It is the basis for abuse in relationships; it’s the basis for abuse in tyrannical governments. If fear is governing, something is wrong. We must look away from the fear and search for an antidote. And we must fight for it. Find someone who is not fearful to communicate with. They might know something. The light must shine in the darkness. In fact light is the only way to dispel darkness. It won’t go away by itself.
There is a reason why freedom of religion has been at the forefront of this past year’s struggles. Those who promote fear, seek to remove all forms of solace, whether spiritual or social. Given dominance they would destroy it all.
Peace and prosperity are dependent on a just society. Nothing destroys trust and joy faster than injustice and nothing creates fear faster than the destruction of a reliable Rule of Law. This is why the United States was founded on deeply thought-out legal and moral principles. When followed and adhered to faithfully, they stabilize government, the economy, and the expectations of the population to freely pursue their goals of life, liberty and happiness. The power to retain everything bequeathed to them resides with the people. Our founding fathers warned they had given us the toolbox, basically, to stay free for 200 years or more, but then we’d have to fight for it again. Because ignoble individuals arise. It is the simple lesson of history.
We must defend the Constitution and the principles it was founded on. Sadly, the minimizing of respect for the Ten Commandments has been much at the core of the disintegration of our justice system. If “Thou Shalt Not Steal” is thought to be archaic, the door closes for respect of personal property ownership and for its defense. The door opens for the destructive tenets of socialism, where individual and national sovereignty do not exist, where everyone becomes homogenized into one miserable, government-controlled utility, and freedom dies for all. Perhaps forever.
2021 is when and where the rubber meets the road.
Where will YOU be?
Copyright 2020 Nancy Diraison/Diraison Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
All photos Dreamstime photo credits.
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