On 11/12/01, foo wrote:

> what's your secret?

Music. Friends. Love. Text formatting. Stuff like that.

> i can't seem to disregard the world around me and be happy in the face of
> the repeated horrors of recent days.

I think the "secret" is a focusing of attention. Imagine a big round pie that represents everything on your mind; you can only eat one slice at a time, and it's not actually a very big slice (though it's still there when you're done, so it isn't acutally a very good analogy.) You can fill your belly with all the bad stuff, or all the good stuff, or some combination therein.

Either way, you've gotta vomit it back afterwards (which is why it's such a bad, albeit picturesque, analogy.)

I am categorially not saying that anyone should ignore all that bad stuff -- but it doesn't have to be the primary focus of all your attention all the time, especially when there's little for us as individuals to do to fix it. It's better to do those few things that you can (make donations, call your congresscritter, etcetera) and also enjoy life as much as possible.