You've seen those commercials, about an elderly person who lives alone and falls and has no one to come to their aid (but if only they've had Life Alert!). But sometimes, it's the inner "fall" that can be as devastating to someone, as I've witnessed with my mother following my father's death in 2013.
His death also set me on a bit of a downward spiral for a time, and my creative writing output suffered significantly for a year or two. But even as I climb back out of that hole, it has made me even more sensitive than before to all of the death and destruction and general mayhem in the world.
I signed up for a newsletter for Dr. Mark Hyman awhile back. I'm not much on "self help" New Agey platitudes, but I found these particular parts of his essay on "Why Doing Nothing is the Key to Happiness" (i.e. meditation, reflection) very helpful:
"What matters most in life is the quality of our experience, the ability to be awake to what is real and true in our lives, for the difficult and the happy times, to be awake to each person we touch, to our own experience, to this very moment, to the simple sweet and alive gifts of a smile, a kind deed, the breeze on our skin, the firefly flickering the early summer night.
Pain is inevitable. Loss is inevitable. Death, illness, war, disaster have always been and will always be part of the human condition. Yet within it, I wondered as a young man, was there a way to understand suffering in a different light, to break the cycle of suffering. I realized there was a way to be more awake, to see things as they are, to notice life as it is and savor it, to love it, to wake up with gratitude and lightness and celebration for the magic of life. It is always there, and the trick is simply to notice."
As we all start a New Year, it may be helpful to do more living in the moment, paying more attention to the "little things" that make up the majority of our daily lives. I find it helps my writing, too, to be able to focus in on one specific slice of time and bring in all of the senses and feelings surrounding it. Sometimes we rush through our days so mindlessly, we miss most of our lives. So, I think it's time to "do more nothing" and reap the peacefulness it can bring in the midst of our chaotic modern world. At least I'm going to try.