heavy hearts. weary minds.

the last few days, and posts for that matter, have been pretty depressing.  there has been a lot of heavy stuff happening in our backyards.  everything from a mass shooting in a neighboring state to a drought encompassing the whole region to a hate crime in our capital city.  life is hard enough without all of this bad news.  parenting is tough enough without having to try to explain to kids why other kids die.  or why some adults hurt people.
my son is only 3 1/2 so i don't have to do much explaining, yet.  however, i know the time is near since he already asks about the sick kids on the st. jude commercials and the animals on those terribly sad "stop animal abuse" commercials.  kids are little literalists and i think the standard answers "sometimes people get hurt", "sometimes people hurt people", or "i don't know" are the worst thing to tell them.  but what else are we supposed to say?  because i really don't know why hate crimes against gays are still happening.  i really don't know why some guy thought he was the joker and killed 12 people.
i could speculate for days about gun control, climate change, the lack of aid for the mentally ill, GMO vs. non-GMO, violence on TV, and so on and so forth.  however, i am not sure how much that is going to change the world.  i think those are all important things to discuss and even change, but those don't do much good when i am trying to parent. 
this may seem hippy dippy to some of you, but i believe that somewhere along the way we lost our sense of community and sense of belonging to one another.  we forgot the power of kindness, generosity, and taking care of our neighbors.  being kind to people.  giving to others less fortunate. knowing your community.  that stuff speaks to kids.  that stuff makes people want to pay it forward.  more people paying it forward, knowing their neighbor, feeling pride in their community can only lead to a brighter world.
will it change the world, though?  will it eradicate all the bad news?  probably not, but it will make the world brighter.  and it will make it a better place.  slowly but surely. at least i think so. 
this article talks about how an urban community garden in chicago set out to solve the food desert issues in their poorest neighborhoods.  what happened was not what they expected.  basically, they sell most of the food now, but they employ people from the neighborhood and the "green space" helped reduce crime, give the community pride, and made it more beautiful. here's a quote:

‎"We don't delude ourselves that we're solving the food desert problem," Harry Rhodes, Growing Home's executive director, told me. "It's to use food as a tool to change individual lives and to change community." Research has shown that if you diminish violence, people will be less stressed, and less-stressed people eat healthier.


what if this practice applied to more of the world and in different ways.  what if we changed the way we thought of ourselves and our impact on the community?  perhaps people selling loads of ammo to a 24 year old young man that seemed off or troubled would report it instead of minding their own business.  we've all done it.  opted to not help someone because we thought it wasn't our business.  or maybe someone who overheard a group of young men talking about the "dyke" they hated would tell them to knock it off or report them to the police.  we perpetuate crime when we ignore it.
or how about if we took notes from what one farm family did for another farm family during the 80's farm crisis.  one farmer could not get the lending he needed to continue to run his family farm.  he went out on a limb and asked a neighboring farm family to help him.  they did.  he is now a millionaire.  and you guessed it.  he now helps the family who helped him.
so, instead of letting all of this incredibly sad news get us down, i propose we try to perform one kind act a day. it doesn't have to be much.  you could just send a note to a friend with a sick baby or give a homeless person a cold bottle of water or hold the door open for someone.  again, let's just try to be kind and see where it takes us.