Sometimes I really think the world is going to hell...

...particularly when I watch/listen/hear/read about things in the news.

When I was in junior high, I used to be obsessed with the weather. Like, I really needed to know whether it was going to be cold, hot, rainy, snowy, foggy, or humid outside the following day. This obsession followed me into high school, and eventually stopped in 11th grade.

The only way I was able to find out what the weather was going to be like the next day was via the 10 o'clock news.

Pre-internet days, people. Get with it.

So the weather man wouldn't come on until exactly 10:30 and so I would have to watch 30 minutes of the news. This is how I kept up with current events.

Eventually when my obsession with the weather subsided, so did my knowledge of things that were happening in the world in which I resided.

I didnt know what was going on in the world for the past 8 years. No joke.

Fast forward a couple of years and enter: facebook.

Facebook, if used with good intentions can actually be resourceful. For real. I started noticing a lot of people updating their status about various things that were happening in the city, state, country, and world. So I started catching myself up with the latest buzz. And in the midst of catching up with current events, I also came back to the realization of why I stopped watching the news.

In retrospect, there never seems to be good news. Why dont people report on happy things? I mean I know they do, but some days it just seems like there is no good news. It's like you have to dig realllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy deep to find something. Anything. That will make you smile. Or laugh. And if there is good news to be shared, it's always twisted into something that it totally wasn't supposed to be twisted into. Michelle Obama dancing with orphans and kids in India becomes a dance that supports the "axis of evil". Whatever the hell that means. ( This really didnt happen, but you know what I mean)

Some days I really do think the world and it's inhabitants are just far from where we should be, and some days I just rather stay in the dark about it.

But then there are other things that make me think living in this world, aint so bad. Like when I see non-Muslims, like Kate, defending Muslims and Islam. Or like when I see a student's Mom writing encouraging notes to their kids and putting it into their lunchbags.

Or like when I watch the Daily show with Jon Stewart and see how ridiculous the media makes things out to be.




Or like when I hear crazy stories from my sister's new nursing job. Or when I get a phone call from a friend and we talk about the most pointless things in the world. Or when my kids genuinely find my "Knock Knock" jokes amusing. Or when my mom wakes up in the wee hours of the morning and bids me farewell while I walk out to my car, in the dark. Or when I laugh about the most dumbest and randomest things with my siblings. Or knowing that one of my sisters is learning how to play the violin. Or seeing parents involved in their child's education.

Or attending a teacher conference and hearing the famous author, Mitch Albom, give a speech about having a little faith that can take you a long way.



Or knowing that I'm a teacher, and at least one of my students is learning something. Or like watching the show, School Pride, the school version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and seeing how much people truly care about education in America, and being effective about it.




Or (minus the most recent episode----another story for another time), watching people actively defend and protect and fight for strangers on the show "What would you Do?"



And so on and so forth.

So yeah, on certain days, the world does suck, but you just gotta take the good with the bad.

And hope that some day the good will outweigh the bad and pray that the world really doesn't go to hell.

And maybe not watch the news so much.