Getting to Yes ....

John Lennon first met Yoko Ono in 1966 at an avant garde art gallery in London called Indica. There was an exhibition with a ladder that led to a painting, which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a white canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it.

Lennon climbed the ladder, looked through the spyglass, and in tiny little letters it said, YES.

This was such a positive message that Lennon described his reaction as one of "relief".

Although this incident took place well over fourty years ago, I find myself thinking about the message of relief behind the art quite often. Every day when we turn on the news channel, it seems that the overwhelming number of news items are about, how many people are killed in terrorist attacks, car accidents, shootings and other destructive acts.

It seems that if there are not enough of these types of stories from the murkier side of human nature, the media looks to the economy, the level of  unemployment, encroaching deflation, spiralling interest rates and how it will directly affect us all. Not only do they tell us about their worst fears, they continually remind us over and over every night, so the cycle of worry and anxiety feeds incessantly on itself.

Sensationalism often takes the place of balance reporting, and words such as alleged, reported, possible and so forth creep into the story line all too often when it is very obvious that the media is on weak ground and fishing around for something "meatier" than a more upbeat humane story or scientific discovery.

It seems to me that the combined impact of the global financial crisis on our personal lives, whether it be through the loss of a job, depleted savings, lower superannuation or the secondary impact on friends and relatives, the last thing we need is an over abundance of negatively slanted news in our lives.

Now I want to be very clear about what I mean here. I am not advocating that the media ignore the tragedies happening in the world, but more, a balance approach to news presentation. Instead of five out of six stories being negative, how about fifty fifty or better. In these difficult times we need to hear more about the positive side of life, society and the economy. Lets look to the future with a positive approach and not one of anxiety and despair. Facing reality in times of change is a challenge for all of us and we really do need the glass to be half full.

The bad times are over, if you really want them to be. .....

Cheers