It wasn’t the real me, was it? I wasn’t supposed to feel that way – gloomy, despondent almost, discouraged, and heavy with a kind of general sadness. Most persons who know me – including myself, I guess – see the optomistic side of me. I am an upbeat person, right? I accentuate the positive and try to eliminate the negative. Mostly it works.
But somehow, not right now. Not tonight. Not after absorbing the heavy news in the morning paper. Not after suffering through the bad news on ABC and PBS during my evening visit to hear their anchors, reporters, and pundits. Sure, the news was a downer but what’s different about that? Isn’t it always? No. Something was different tonight.
I know what it is. And I am surprised that I am so vulnerable, feeling rather that I should be able to take in stride the media parade of horror, abuse, cruelty, government obfuscation and denial.
It’s those pictures, you see. In my experience and practice of communication and public relations, I know as well as anyone that images can be more dangerous – or even sometimes more salutary – than a million words. I have been listening to the experts, the psychologists, the historians, the columnists, reporters, politicians, generals, and the vox populi all give reactions, theories, predictions. A massive poll of the world’s turn-around attitudes toward us Americans – resenting our power, our bulldogging to fix other nations’ ills, our hypocrisy by pointing the finger at other abusers when we are also guilty. All of this verbal input teases my intellect. But when the pictures are shown, my emotion takes over. And I find I am sad.
I should feel encouraged by all the open discussion, even in the halls of our Congress, that may force change in a positive direction. I grasp for hope. But then the pictures come. They have been saved in my brain (and by the networks) and keep returning, resisting my attempts to delete.
In silence, the Jim Lehrer News Hour closes with its gallery of the recent dead in Iraq. And there they are for thousands of us together to absorb the fresh youthful faces -- smiling faces from Florida, Texas, Kansas, Pennsylvania and maybe a Minnesota sergeant who might have been a neighbor once. I read the captions that give names, rank, age, and home towns. All in dramatic silence. No spoken words. No tearful music.
Being morose and blue is out of character for me. Don’t cheer me up! If I laugh and say I’m fine, it doesn’t matter, tomorrow is another day, etc., etc., I would feel guilty. I need to bear this cross of sorrow -- at least for today.
But before the day is over, I nevertheless must apply my tried-and-true antidote. A friend, now gone, once gave it to me and explained how it helped him. He called it “praise therapy”. Of course. There are plenty of persons to praise. The congressional salons who are trying desperately to do the right thing. The whistle-blowers who have risked much in leaking secret scandals. The good soldiers who are as pained as I am or more. The citizens who are not just waiting to see what will happen but are asking “What can I do?” And the multitude of folks in other countries who love America and Americans and, though disgusted and resentful and critical and pained, still cling to hope that this bad dream will pass and America’s vision will ultimately prevail.
I praise these souls and many others who, in spite of their own sadness and disillusionment, are praying with me for light and hope. And in so doing, we can be healed.
My conscience is causing me to add, in spite of this downer and more liable to come, that I will especially Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow…..
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| Page last modified by Richard Lee on 12 May 2004 |
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