Remember when you were a kid and the newspaper would come, and dad would take the front page, mom would take the lifestyle section and the kids would get the comics first?  We’d all sit at breakfast and Dad would fuss at the news headlines, and mom would comment about what she was reading, to lighten the mood.  As kids, we’d just be reading the comics and not paying attention to much of anything either of them said, lost in our own little world of Dennis the Menace, Peanuts, and Calvin and Hobbes.  For the kids, Sunday morning was for reading the Sunday funnies (in color!) and thinking of what fun things could be done with a day off.  For Dad, Sunday morning was for catching up on the bad news of the week all at one time.  What he read in the paper determined what his mood was going to be all day.  After reading the Sunday paper, we kids were ready to play and have fun while Daddy was bummed out and disheartened over the state of the the world.  Not a vibrational match for a fun day.  Or a fun life.

I’m not saying it’s all about fun, and I did not have a tormented childhood.  I grew up in a working class family with my father a carpenter and my mother a phone clerk, both employed full time while we were growing up. Our dad was a slow reader, having only a 6th grade education, and that added to his frustration when reading the news – having to take time to figure out what the words were, then what they meant.  He always woke up in a happy mood, but it went downhill fast after reading the headlines.

We didn’t grow up knowing that what we think about and read about and vibrate in harmony with is what we would attract into our life. We didn’t know that if we focused on something cranky at the beginning of each day, we would see the whole day through a cranky filter, and attract more to be cranky about.  We just grew up knowing that we wanted to do what felt good and do what made us happy. Like reading the comics on Sunday morning.  It put us in a good mood for the day.  It added to the fun we had. Seeing the fun the cartoon characters were having made us imagine ourselves in their place, having the fun with them, doing the things they could do.

Again I’m not saying it’s all about fun, but it kinda is. It’s about vibrating in a place that helps us attract more of what we want to attract.  We vibrate in a place when we think about it, when we ponder it, when we daydream and imagine scenarios about it.

Reading the Sunday funnies was the first time I imagined I could be more than I was.  I’d read Brenda Starr and imagine myself going off on her adventures.  Growing up, I wanted to be either Brenda Starr or Della Street. It was kind of like crime fighting, because I’d get to bring truths to light through what I reported, or I’d get to help justice be done behind the scenes.  I guess in retrospect, I did become both Della Street and Brenda Starr through my career as a criminal defense paralegal and now as a writer and publisher.

I’m teaching my 80 year old aunt to use the computer so she can go online and expand her world outside her sitting room.  I’ve made a cheatsheet of topic headings (cooking, crafting, genealogy) on a sticky note at her monitor, as well as bookmarked for her some of her favorite places to visit online.  I love when she comes out excited about what this friend or that said in a forum, or some exciting new something she saw online.  What I don’t love is when she comes out quiet and timid and somber, because she got distracted by some news headlines that disturbed her and she can’t get it out of her mind.  At 80 years old, she has never tried to train her mind to stay focused, so it does not come easily to her.  She has to be reminded to go back and look for the good, so that her worried mind can settle down and remember that all really is well.

Why would she choose to read the bad when the good is bookmarked and sticky noted for her???  Why would she continue to read the headlines when she knows it is just upsetting to her, and something she regrets later when she’s worried all night long?

I’m the kind of person that gets totally engrossed in whatever I am doing, and I know it helps me to have sticky notes or a list telling me what it is I want to stay focused on.  Like during final layout week, when I get wrapped up reading what my Facebook friends are doing.  It helps me to see the sticky note that says “finish downloading all email ads and return calls”.  That gets me back to work when I stray.  Even I sometimes need to be reminded to go back and look for the good.

Read the news or read the funnies?  It’s your choice.

Andrea

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