The sun is out, as forecast, and the workmen I booked, here to inspect and mend the water pipes, are working well. Everything this morning is happening as expected so things, really, ought to be fine.
But the papers, as usual, have plenty of gloom. The Daily Mirror deplores the fact that “rape boys [are] in the same class as victims”; there’s a picture of the bombed subway in St Petersburg where 13 people were killed; and one of a Muslim woman who felt forced to take off her hijab in order to get a job. In the Times there’s a less than cheerful tale of a murdered family who had kindly given shelter to a homeless man. Depressingly, we are told, too, that “ministers have abandoned a plan to help struggling families”.
Are we meant to read all this and feel like giving up? Or get cross with newspaper editors for presenting such a picture of doom? Of course, the papers don’t have only gloomy tales, but it is arguable that such items can actually make our own lives seem good by contrast.
Perhaps it’s only when we realise there are awful things going on in the rest of the world that we think of ourselves as pretty lucky after all – and can stop worrying about the petty things that otherwise bog us down. Does it really matter that I can’t find my keys for the umpteenth time today when children in Syria are dying because of a suspected chemical attack?
When we read about some of the terrible things some people do to others, it can help us to realise that the people we deal with day by day in our own lives are not, after all, any worse than others, indeed they may even be a whole lot better. Whatever we have to cope with, we can rest assured it is not the worst thing that anyone had to face.
What do you think? Have your say below
