Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another.Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
Last night, boatsie was spot on about the angst in the zeitgeist. It’s thick enough to spread with a knife.
She’s right about the comfort of board games, too. Just interacting with friends over a game is uplifting. Even a game like Pandemic can be cathartic, even though the prospect of death to all humans through horrible diseases hangs heavy with that one. (Boatsie, you might try Pandemic Iberia which is set in the mid-19th Century in Spain — it’s a little more emotionally removed from the threat of immanent demise in the here and now. Or if you want a full-on scary-monster co-op game, there is always the Lovecraft based Arkham Horror: The Card Game.)
It’s the end of November. There is less light. People are suffering everywhere, often from something preventable, deliberate, or from things that can be mitigated (but aren’t). Any sensitive person is feeling it. And the planet itself is suffering from stuff humans do.
What can we do to make things better? Well, there are things we can do in the outer world — like all the work done for this last election or good works of any sort. But there is also the work from the inner world, the light we shine out to others.
So in an effort to lighten up in these dark times, please tell me something good that is happening in your sphere. It can be really small or big. It can be something you are doing that is positive or beauty that you see. Even little tiddly bits of shared thankfulness add up! Thankfulness is healthy for everyone’s spirit.