Thought for the day

I just got up. At the last moment, before tearing myself from my kipsack, I listened to 'Thought for the Day' on Radio 4. An author (I can't remember his name) was talking about discernment. You know, everybody is focused on Bird Flu, a theoretical 'Pandemic' (to be honest if I ever hear that word again I may go all 'Falling Down') whilst so many children are dying from AIDS in the time it takes you to read this that you cannot even count 'em.

So he talks about balance of fears. His theory is that we are all so overwhelmed with fear, fear of this, fear of that, that we have a hard time discerning how to respond. 79,00 die in an earthquake and it barely registers on the news compared to a not even perfect storm in the USA.

Don't get me wrong. All suffering is a tragedy, but we need to keep our perspective and in so doing try to keep sane. We are, I suspect, becoming fear-saturated - it is almost hard to know when to care.

Those that know me might realise why this hit such a nerve for me. Fear-saturation is something that I feel is very important to recognise and make efforts to defuse.

In the words of the legendary HST, OK for now...