I see far too many caring people searching for things to suffer about. I have friends who eagerly seek out stories of abused animals and abandoned children and share these stories with others. I have other sincere friends who seek out examples of outrageous behavior by elected officials and spend their time spreading the word of this corruption. There are many more who make it their business to seek out injustices and to expose these injustices and the people who cause them.
I do not question their motives as I was once one of them and spent years speaking unpleasant truths to powerful people. This quixotic activity affected my health and probably affected my sanity as it cost me several remunerative jobs over the years. I couldn’t stop, of course, because I was doing what was right!
I was acting as though I had an infinite supply of life force while my actions and the responses from friends and coworkers were actually depressing me and continually draining me of life force. Of course, at the time I had no clue that I was a spiritual being having a human experience. My whole life was a series of simple stimulus-response cycles. I would start a job or a relationship and have intense interactions with others which usually involved trying to be right. Looking back, I am not sure how real these other people were to me. I think I was trying to make them fit my preconceptions rather than trying to understand their viewpoints on life.
I was aware of their counter-intentions but had no way to communicate with them and reach a harmonious understanding. As a result, I spent much of my adult life under stress, gobbling Maalox and Gelusil to control my constant indigestion.
I have dear friends who peruse the internet for disturbing news and feel compelled to keep track of what they have found. Each time they share what they have found, I feel their anxiety is being ratcheted up another notch. It is not the sharing that bothers me, as I can just acknowledge it and let it go. What concerns me is that their anxiety is affecting their health in various ways, even though they are taking steps to handle the symptoms.
Every one of the people I know who are having health problems has some sort of unhandled stress in their lives. Modern medicine treats the symptoms of this stress with drugs and surgery but rarely deals with the actual source of the stress.
I am suggesting that our lives would be much happier and healthier if we eliminated the sources of stress in our lives and stopped reading the daily news and entertainment of a disturbing nature. If you keep reading about things you cannot control and have no responsibility for, you will put yourself into a dwindling spiral that will depress your life force and shorten your life.
If you concentrate on helping people who desire your help and do something creative every day, you will find your vitality stays high and your morale will stay high also.