Shut It On A Good Note

Leave the bad outside

It is easy to get into the routine of checking our e-mails, news feeds and social media while we have our coffee. We clickity-click on one link and it leads us to 10 others. We get caught up in the traffic on the highway of the internet. We curse, we swear, we roll our eyes and by the time we call it a night, our blood pressure is up and we feel all tight. There is so much bad and really bad out there and it is easy to let it steal our focus, peace and joy. We disseminate bad information all day long, and ending on a note of gloom sets our mind for the rest of the day, or night.

One thing I have found, is that before I end my time online, I visit one website that makes me happy. An article about a place I know nothing about. A cooking site. Air BnB’s “take me anywhere” button. Just anything to start my intellectual juices flowing with the right kind of start to the coming evening.

I subscribe to The Epoch Times. Digital and print. It comes out weekly and it takes me a week to give it a good going through. There are times when, by the time I get the print paper, I have already read the newsy section, so that is easily skimmed. I love the op-eds and the minds who write them. Then there is a whole page of crosswords etc. But, the part I really love to sit and read are the sections on Mind and Body, Life and Tradition and Home. I sink right into those articles and don’t skip any. There was one article about a certain painting and the author’s take on what the painting represented. The painting was by Johannes Vermeer. You may know the artist by his most famous painting The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Anyway, the author described his view on what he thought the painting, Woman Holding a Balance, meant. I happened to differ with his take. I thought she was pregnant. He made no mention of that. So, I sent him a thoughtful e-mail about what my opinion was. He responded right away and we have shot a few e-mails back and forth. My inner intellectual is most satisfied with this turn of events. He makes me think. He makes me want to be more rounded. There is nothing untoward, just a new appreciation, on my part, of a pursuit that I have normally shunned. Art. It makes me feel good to expand my mind with something that is not current events.

Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance 1662

So, before I close the little black beast of a laptop up for the evening I will look up something else about paintings. I am sure I have seen the worlds most beautiful paintings hanging in London galleries or in the halls and ceilings of the Vatican. I just didn’t appreciate them at the time. Art matters to who and what man can create. We can create more than chaos in this world. Men created the city of Venice. Sometimes I think progress is really no progress at all. I think we have, as human beings, regressed. We have become shallow, ignorant, disconnected from our ties to the earth and the seasons. We rarely step outside to connect to nature. People don’t read actual books anymore. There used to be magazines in waiting rooms. Not anymore. No magazines in the doctor’s office or tire shop or car dealership. So, if you are part of the 1% that do not have a phone to scroll through, hope you have a book handy.

Aristotle said “Innovating for the sake of innovating can actually diminish the very thing from which it originated.” If that doesn’t describe the current state we are in, I don’t know what does. The phone upgrades alone are just bloody ridiculous. What is wrong with the one you have?? Oh, the camera isn’t as good. Well, buy a little camera and keep the old phone! Or, buy a little camera and throw the cell phone into the bonfire! They eat up your life. I have no doubt that sooner rather than later, mankind will have a problem walking upright. Again. But, gee, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?