Grounded

 

All through life when times get tough, when things start to run away with us or when things start to get too much we often hear the advice “stay grounded.” We are told to “keep our feet on the ground” to balance us, to remind of something solid, something steady that can help bring us down from those dizzying heights that challenging times can take us to. But what happens when that safety net fails, when you can no longer trust the earth to keep you steady?

Recently I experienced a rather nasty earthquake which has left this question playing on my mind. When we live in a world of such uncertainty, how exactly do we stay grounded when we can’t even trust the ground we walk on?

But this idea of losing trust in your surroundings goes further than a shift in tectonic plates, for me personally anyway. Over recent months I have watched the bubble of my own personal little world of experiences shift drastically. I now live on a little Greek island where the best and worst moments of humanity play out on a daily basis, here it is very difficult to stay grounded, particularly when the earth literally moves so I do tend to find memories of home a steadying anchor, or at least I did, until recent months.

I watch the outside world from the perspective of my little Aegean island mostly through traditional and social media and more often than I could ever imagine I wake up to the Facebook safety check icon informing me another friend is safe from another horrific moment in our modern history.

I see the pictures of Parliament and of London Bridge and read the messages of friends who were there, who witnessed the horrors and remember the times we shared much happier memories in these places which will be forever changed in both of our minds.

I see the pictures of frantic families trying to trace their missing children who had gone to simply enjoy a concert but became victims of a horrific attack in my old University city.

Most recently I see a place where I found a family not connected by blood but by love, a place that has always been my refuge, reeling in horror, in destruction, in terror on Las Ramblas. I still see the picture of a small boy who remains missing being shared on social media and remember the days I walked this street holding the hand of a little boy I love dearly with never a thought crossing my mind that anything so heartbreaking could have happened in this beautiful place.

But we all now have these memories of places we love being shadowed in the grief of terrorism or the new layer to our terror filled days – the rise of fascism. Every day we wake up to another horror, near or far, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anywhere. So what do we do to stay grounded?

I mean we can always distract ourselves from the terrorism on our doorsteps with the escalating rhetoric of nuclear war between North Korea and the US? Or we can watch white supremacists march the streets waving Nazi flags murdering young anti fascist demonstrators? Or take minute to remember the still ongoing refugee crisis on the shores of Italy and Greece and the hundreds of lives still lost in the Mediterranean or the hundreds of lives still trapped in camps and detention facilities in an endless wait for asylum in Europe.

I could go on with many more examples but as you can see it’s pretty hard to stay grounded when crisis and horror become our every day. But what hurts the most is how we are now so used to this life that we have become so desensitized, but what else can we do other than detach, it is not possible to live day to day if you spiral into all in the grief in the world.

So again, how do we stay grounded, how do we not go to denial but keep our heads?

Honestly, I am not entirely sure, I am very open to suggestions. Answers on a postcard?

But I do know that the most important thing we can all do is just not buy into all the hate. Terrorists whether they be pledging allegiance to ISIS, the KKK or whatever the hell radicalized ideology do not represent their race, their religion or the colour of their skin. The white supremacists in Charlottesville represent me as much as the terrorists in Barcelona represent the religion of Islam. These individuals are a minority, they are not the majority no matter what the media may have you believe.

I don’t believe the world is as doomed as it may seem on the surface. The majority of people out there are kind and loving and just trying to get by in these bloody scary times. But unfortunately fear isn’t too many stops away from hate and when we are really scared our ignorance can lead to some pretty extreme standpoints on issues we never really felt too strongly about before.

I discovered something interesting recently about ignorance. A friend began to tell me about an article she had read about a new development in Artificial Intelligence and before she could even begin I asked her to stop talking about it because it scares me and I don’t want to know anything about it. That, my dear friends, is ignorance and it is as easy as that. Replace AI with something the media have told us to fear, for example refugees, and if you take the same stand point as I did and refused to learn any real facts, no wonder you are scared.

So maybe, to stay grounded we need to start learning more about the world we live in. We need to stop allowing the fear to take over and we need to discover how we can make change. I’m not talking about changing the world, but maybe little changes that can add up. Maybe even just talking to friends with a different viewpoint than you, opening up a discussion, challenging ignorance is a place to start.

I don’t know what will happen next, but I hope it is not as terrible as it all may seem right now.

Stand together, show love where you find hate and don’t let fear win.

 

Also, quick tip, if your boyfriends’ parents are staying at your house and you live on a fault line, make sure to always wear more than just your knickers to bed… that is an added horror no one needs when waking up to the earth shaking!

Be strong friends! Peace.