Obsession.

I can’t get the floods out of my head.

I normally avoid the negativity of the news. It overloads my highly-sensitive self. I have stayed away since I switched on NPR in 2005 (with a three year old Sage in the room) and heard a sentence about beheaded bodies discovered in a mass grave in Iraq.

I switched it off and haven’t gone back.

But the floods. I can’t stop thinking about the floods.

Wisconsin has 42 counties. 30 are FEMA disaster sites. And Iowa. Iowa is blowing my freaking mind. The Chicago Tribune had pictures of buildings piled against a railway bridge in the river. Buildings. They just floated away. Buildings.

So as the rivers still churn brown and the roads are still closed and people – friends even – are still shoveling mud out of their living rooms, I am dreaming of a return to normalcy. I’m not sure what that means anymore, but a return to safety, peace, and beauty.

Safety like the “come home before dark.” world that we grew up in. Safety like “environmental disaster = litter”, 1980’s media style (remember the crying Indian?). A world without annual 100 year floods would be nice. Or polar bears eating each other out of desperation and starvation as their world melts quickly away.

So I need to stay adequately informed, but break this grim obsession.

As I see it we have two choices: focus on what scares the hell out of us and watch it expand, or focus on its solution or on some spark of light in our soul and watch that expand. (want more? go here.)

So that is what I choose. To see the good.