Every 2 months I receive a newspaper called Positive News. In it, there is news about peace initiatives, ecological breakthroughs and good practice, ethical businesses – the opposite of what is generally called news!
I find that it helps me to keep the depressing ‘reality’ in perspective, and reminds me that it is not that there is nothing good going on in the world, but that we have forgotten how, as a culture to delight in the good news, because we mostly don’t hear about it.
Once upon a time, news was community-based. The village or small town would know primarily what was happening in its own locality. Then, there would be the mixture of good news and bad, and people would both delight in the good and feel sad or cross about the bad. This type of communication still exists in some places, as well as the global awareness. For example, when my partner left, several people in the village spoke sympathetically of my situation to me. And when I sold my house very quickly and easily, several people made the effort to stop me and congratulate me.
This balanced awareness of what’s happening is useful to all of us, and it is not beyond our reach. Within the worlds we work in, we can ensure that both good news and bad is communicated and reacted to. I don’t think that we need to work on the spreading of bad news – that seems to be endemic! So let’s balance it, by actively promoting the good news – celebrating personal and organisational successes, and reminding ourselves that much of life and much of human behaviour is good news!
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