Breathe, Hold Your Breath and Exhale

Breathe, hold your breath, exhale, calm yourself, believe and accept and then what? I am the person who stayed tuned for hours watching the twin towers fall over and over. I am the person who watches the water rise during flood season when our community and so many others are altered by rising water levels. I do have friends that don't watch the news and know people who don't go on social media. I scroll through facebook regularly and sometimes wonder why I put myself through that. But without the news and my Facebook feed I would not have heard the prime minister assure us we will get through this together and I would not have seen the beautiful poem that spoke so deeply to me this morning. I get caught up in things as do most people but I did not see the need to go buy toilet paper. Perhaps that speaks to the optimist in me. I choose to believe the twenty rolls we have will be enough for whatever lies ahead until I can buy more as I normally would.I think this morning of the tension , the fear and the sense of the unknown in all this and I can't help but ponder on the self centered-ness of it. Do we think we are so different from generations before us and those who will come after us? My fear and tension is from a place of good health,a comfortable home, healthy family members, food, clean water , some financial stability, total freedom to stay home and decide on my social interactions so I can only imagine what some are going through. But still I am caught up in the tide of fear. I think of the Spanish flu, typhoid fever, the world wars , the constant and prevailing conflicts around the world, polio, aids. Oh my do I need to go on? I wonder about the value of my words as I write them. In the millions of words being shared on this day , some affirming and some adding to the chaos why do my words matter?Words can build up or tear down. Our actions can support or defeat. Giving voice to our fears can quiet them. So today I concentrate on the words I began this entry with and will probably need to repeat them quite often in the next while. I will breathe. I will hold my breath for the ten seconds suggested as a quick check for respiratory wellness. I will exhale and calm myself. I will believe and accept and then... Then I will be thankful, wait for this to pass, count my blessings. I will learn the lessons generations have learned before me. Life is fragile, pain is part of living, suffering is real, people are resilient, love makes a difference, we are a small fleck in the scheme of things, we can breathe.