We're in this together - Annie Lennox

If we view the world as an interdependent global village, then we avoid taking action at our own peril.

WE LIVE IN complicated times. We seek, but we don’t necessarily find, the ultimate things we long to experience – contentment, joy, love, inner peace. Our lives are too often overloaded with demands: that we should be successful, rich, beautiful and famous; but this just adds to our inner stress and turmoil. The media constantly bombard us with images reminding us of our ‘lack’ … and we so often feel like failures.

Life’s condition means that at any given moment the things we value most can be swiftly taken away from us. Our health, our safety and security, both emotionally and physically, cannot be guaranteed, so we carry our anxiety and fear of loss within and around us, unwittingly. We strive for a ‘better moment’ than the one we are currently in, while dragging the burdens of our past into every present situation, so that we are rarely, if ever, ‘here and now’.

How do we find meaning, value and connection in a society that is dislocated and in many ways dysfunctional? We have lost our sense of community or belonging to anything much beyond our own individual circumstance. We have become voyeurs, vacuously gazing at reality TV shows and sitcoms while exhibitionists and ever-new ‘celebrities’ grab their shot at fifteen minutes of fame.

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