goodness.

sorry, this post might be a tad bit morbid. but through my daily scanning of our local newspaper here in vizag, a couple things have come to my attention.

first, indians are incredibly lenient about misspellings & grammatical errors in the presentation of their current events.

and secondly, the world seems to me to be in a far sorrier state than i ever perceived it to be living in the U.S.

seriously, some of this stuff is wack.

in the past couple days, i've read about parents who strangled their daughter because of her choice for a husband; a 104 year-old woman asking the govt. for permission to commit suicide, because of her son's abuse & neglect; a girl whose stalker killed both of her parents; and a teenage boy who robbed & murdered another boy in order to buy a teddy bear & a couple of CDs for his girlfriend on valentines day.

i guess my shock could be attributed to one of two things-- first, i am in india, and a population of over 1 billion people ensures that there's more than a few weirdos among them.

that, or things are just as bad at home, but living on an idyllic island where i don't read the newspaper or watch tv makes me oblivious.

either way, the news can be real depressing. i'm often torn between wanting to pop my fingers in my ears & never hear another word of it, and feeling guilty because i can easily put down the paper, finish my breakfast, & continue on with my day unaffected.

sometimes i think, "as a citizen of the world, amy, you have the responsibility to be informed.." but glancing through another page's worth of headlines makes me lament my belonging to such a world.

i don't know what the right balance is, between being aware & unable to sleep at night, or arguably ignorant & idealistic. but when the pup starts nibbling at my toes, or i walk outside to see bhavana & megana running my way, i know this much--

there is an abundance of goodness in our world.

india, america, brazil, no matter. there is joy to be found in every corner. and that's our task, as citizens of the world; we must create goodness. to counteract all that bad news.