How very difficult it must be to be young!  The world's violence and depravity constantly invades our space through modern media.  I like to keep up with current affairs but even I find it hard to stomach and must turn to a funny cat video to erase the taste of decomposition. 

We have two of the grandkids here; age 6 and 7.  Bright innocent blue and brown eyes.  I'm not a kid person but I look at these little girls and shudder at the world they've inherited from us and our forebears.  And the muck they must wade through.  People doing unspeakable things to one another, to animals, to children.  All there for the world to see.

Even art.  I get really disgusted with 'art'.  So much of it NSFW.  Or so mired in sex and violence and blackness I feel dirty afterwards.  I've learned not to look. 

Even my dreams are affected.  I awoke the other night from the very real flash of a nuclear explosion x-raying through my closed eyelids.  I thought it was real.  Last night was a saga of survival, herding Richard and someone else to safety and trying to gather essentials like warm clothes, bedding, food and an optimism I didn't feel.  It was a dreadful dream, also very real.  Agonizing about the animals that I couldn't save, could no longer feed.  What to do with them?  How to protect my little company from the predation of others.  I awoke exhausted and depressed.   

I know, KNOW, this is a matter of attention.  Turn my attention to other things.  ISIS' beheadings don't really affect me except that I allow them to.  Today I squatted on the ground looking at a leaf.  It was dappled with sun and shade, bright green, dull green, one piece turning yellow where an insect had had a meal.  The column of air above it leading to the ionosphere remained unaffected by humankind's 'stuff'.   It existed perfect and pure and complete onto itself.  It captivated my attention, reminding me of what is real and what isn't. 

I don't have any answers.  Evil can't be ignored, I know that but I also know it's a product of our intent.  For some reason it acts as a counterweight to all the good things happening in the world (McDonalds and Subway have decided not to use cage eggs anymore).  Is that it?

A Buddhist sage (I think - don't quote me!) was asked about the amount of evil in the world.  He answered that the amount was about right.  There's lightness and there's an absence of light.  How to know the reality of light without the reality of darkness?  Is that it?

Guess these dreams are a reminder and a prod to get a grip.  The mind needs attention and discipline and love as much as the body.  I've been lazy and have absorbed mental junk food.  So back to a rigorous, or at least better, mental diet.