Accentuate the positive

Have you been feeling disappointment of late? Perhaps because you’ve convinced yourself that the world won’t ever be like it was before 2020, or that lockdowns, masks and even mass ‘vaccination’ won’t return hard-won freedoms. Or because society is more polarized than it’s been in a lifetime.

If we allow ourselves to wallow in this disappointment for any extended period of time, we’re at grave risk of going backward. So I want to let you know some of the tricks I play to help me maintain a positive outlook, regardless of what’s happening in the world.

The first is reminding myself that, in an historical sense, things are not that bad—so far. 

Both my parents grew up in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War, my mother in Greece, my father in the Netherlands. Both their families were deeply involved in the Resistance. Food rationing meant that the occasional arrival of food would bring huge joy. But the bad days were truly bad. 

Some of the worst events that were relayed to me some three decades after they happened continue to serve as a reference point. One was the day in May 1940 when my father and his younger brother watched the bombing of Rotterdam harbor by the Luftwaffe. Another was when Nazi troops entered my grandparents’ house with the aim of seizing all Dutch men ages 18 to 45 to work in German factories. 

My grandfather had forged identity papers for my then 18-year-old father to make him appear a year younger. He’d also hidden my father between the floorboards for days on end, and during raids, my father would hear stomping Gestapo boots just above him. 

Then there was my father’s close friend, a poet and radio operator who rushed out on the street to shout out the news of the German military surrender, only to be shot by German troops. 

In Athens, Greece, things weren’t much better for my mother and her family. Particularly memorable is the story of how close friends and fellow resistance workers were taken by a German troop carrier to the mountains close to Athens, as was common where forced labor was required. 

They dug trenches that they thought were foundations for a building, only to find they had dug their own graves.       

We take a serious risk if we don’t learn from history. That’s why we all continue to learn so much from the few remaining Holocaust survivors. 

My own parents, while not Jewish and so not persecuted to the same extent, are now in their ninth decade of life, still living independently and equipped with their full mental faculties.  Fully in touch with the health, social, political and geopolitical shifts that are occurring around us today, they are able to draw on their vast and diverse experiences of life to help me contextualize what is happening.  

What I draw most from them is their positive attitude and appetite for life, for new information that absorbs them every day.

A resistance movement is building—just like it did in the occupied territories of World War II. More to the point, Klaus Schwab and those of his ilk at the World Economic Forum have yet to see the fusion of humans and technology that forms their “transhumanism” plan, in which “designer beings” with edited genomes and artificial memories will be walking in our midst. 

If you’re curious about what they have in store for us, check out Schwab’s 2016 book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. To me, this is like a Third Reich global invasion on steroids, a shift for humanity so fundamental that, if we were to let it happen, we’d have to accept that our species was lost forever.

The second technique I use involves stepping away from it all. I believe this is necessary if we are to maintain a positive outlook and have confidence that the growing solidarity that’s building will be enough to see Schwab’s plan remain in the pages of his book. 

In a world where everyone is chasing information, it might seem odd that freedom from information can be part of
the solution. 

Stillness within builds strength and resilience in body, mind and spirit, in that order. Humans have engaged in religious and spiritual pursuit for eons because they have found benefit. 

It is my view that those who don’t make time to pray, meditate or become mindful (I’ve always disliked that term as it’s contradictory given that its purpose is to escape a full mind), will fail to build the necessary psychological and spiritual strength to face what is still to come. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop for hours on end. It can mean simply changing the way you use your mind when you boil the kettle or ride your bike. Or it might be going deep into yourself aided by the resonance of healing crystals. 

No matter how you choose to build this inner strength, it dovetails with my first mind game of keeping an historical perspective to provide the resilience necessary for these challenging times.

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