It’s not so dark in our little corner

Things seem pretty bad right now. Inflation, a struggling healthcare system, a struggling education system, never enough houses or even plasterboard, breathtaking figures on Covid and Covid-related deaths – all against the backdrop of climate change, violent winter weather, and sunless, short days.

Sometimes, it’s starting to feel like the zombie apocalypse is not just fiction, and looking in my mirror does nothing to challenge that idea. Makes you want to pull the covers over your head for a year or two.

Advice for how to cope with all the bad news is flowing as fast as Canterbury’s rivers.

Some say we should avoid the news because it only causes distress and suffering. Others say accept negative emotions about it without trying to change them, or lean into good relationships.

We know, from all these years of grappling with quakes and lockdowns, floods and disease, that remaining steady through tough times almost always comes back to practising the five ways of wellbeing: give, connect, take notice, be active, and keep learning.

But I still struggle with the winter blues and trying to keep a sense of perspective when the wet days sneak their darkness into my head.

This year, it seems even more important to scan the world’s horizons to make sure we don’t think that our little country at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is subject to a dose of suffering that is unfair or unprecedented.

Take inflation, for example. It’s hurting almost every household, every organisation and every individual in the country. Last week, I got mad at a head of cauliflower because it was going to cost me $9 to take it home. My anger quickly shifted to the heads of the supermarket owners and of duopoly boards.

If I hadn’t stopped myself, I might have cursed the growers as well, but remembered it is not they who have been making $1 million a day in excess profits by operating a near-monopoly on food sales for two decades.

As I pulled myself out of my pity party in the produce section, I reminded myself that a) in New Zealand, there is always cauliflower in our stores, unlike the vast majority of the world’s countries which cannot rely on year-round access to fresh vegetables, nor on reasonable wages to pay for them, and b) the cost of that head of cauliflower will have risen even faster in some countries.

Even though our rate of inflation hit 7.3% in June, it was even higher in the US and UK, and hit 15% in Poland, and an incomprehensible 263% in Sudan. This kept my mouth from gaping as I watched the till operator scan my groceries.

I still struggle with the winter blues and trying to keep a sense of perspective.

When I heard the Secondary Schools Principals Association raise the alarm that schools are ‘‘at or near their breaking point’’ with constant interruptions to students’ learning, I reflected sadly on the weeks of missed or sub-standard school for my high school daughter and her mates.

Later, an Afghan friend explained that her female family members back home can no longer attend any type of educational institution due to the Taliban’s takeover. Her sister-in-law, who was in her last year of a university degree, is ‘‘stuck at home every day unable to even leave without a burqa and a male family member’’. Coping with that boredom, even while dealing with the hunger and deprivation that the vast majority of Afghans now face, is something we could never imagine for our New Zealand youth.

Don’t get me wrong, not achieving educational outcomes in these formative years is of course a serious matter for Kiwi teens, with long-term implications for their futures. But taking notice of the high starting point our learners enjoy in a lucky country like New Zealand helps moderate my feelings of concern for them.

Then there’s climate change. There is no other planet to compare ours to that might bat away the menacing grief about the sorry condition that our fragile world has – not without decades of warnings – found itself in.

But little bits of new science seep through the cracks of all the bad news, which renews my hope in the ability of human ingenuity to move us in a different direction. Plastic-eating bacteria or machines that suck carbon out of the air are two, and the list of innovative sustainable projects grows every day, inspiring me to keep making changes to my lifestyle that may, bit by bit, add up to better environmental news in the years to come.

Keeping a healthy sense of proportion between all the bad news around us and that of the wider world might help us muddle on through this winter of discontent. If not, try pulling the covers over your head for another month or so till spring.