So many sorrows

Nothing to do with remembrance of the past, it's the present day that bothers me.

On Saturdays I like to treat myself to a fresh croissant and a carafe of coffee at this cafe-bar-bakery that I've blipped before. A spacious premises, it's a former church hall now sporting polished wooden tables, random crockery and unusual decor. I spread out the Saturday Guardian for a pleasurable perusal (the rest of the week I read it online). Rapidly my spirits drop as I take in a brutal murder, a particularly tragic suicide that should never have happened, the massive decline in the numbers of British birds as a result of intensive agriculture, the disastrous consequences of irreversible climate change, Ebola orphans left uncared for, strife and war in the Middle East... again and again as I read my eyes prickle and fill with tears.

I'm not convinced things are any worse that they have been at other periods of my life but I seem to have become less able to deal with the impact of negative news. I've always tended to look on the dark side but, in the past, work and family have provided a counterweight to my pessimism. Now without those distractions I feel much more vulnerable to sadness and loss of hope.

It's not that I want to read 'just the good news' nor that I don't have opportunities to do useful or creative things or to get pleasure from a variety of sources but I suppose some protective layers have peeled away and left me feeling exposed and undefended.

I've tagged this Lovers of Light: with my northern European heritage I'm doubtless hard-wired for gloom. I expect I shall bounce back soon enough.