How are you and other random questions?

After a brief visit home and many conversations with friends there and here, about what life is like today, for them...I am now wondering how we all are doing?

I can guess that you too are faced with some of the following: financial scares, job insecurities, job loss, relationship stress, growing family, dividing family, moving, emotional trauma, therapy, promotions, buying houses, new jobs, sleep exhaustion, addictions, joy, accomplishments, achieving goals, overspending, vacations, foreclosure, births, deaths, disease, dieting, starting businesses, job hunting, surviving, thriving...

I wonder what will be remembered from this decade. We have more americans living in poverty than in the past 10 years. The current generation is operating at a lower income/higher cost of living than the generation prior. We have more knowledge and technology available to us than ever before. In this country where we have riches and freedoms, so much to be grateful for, so much to give, and yet, many are broken...emotionally, financially and spiritually impoverished.

How do you view suffering. I have read that some groups think that suffering is self-imposed. That when something bad happens to us, we then relive the experience over and over in our minds creating more suffering adding more ugly details. By that same line of thinking, is suffering contagious? After hearing about someone else's pain, do others cultivate more stories and ideas about pain, remembering their own past pain, pondering their own turmoil and the ill effects of it, only to create more personal suffering? Is suffering (and all negativity) a virus? If so, can it be stopped or cured...am I contributing to suffering to those who read this?

Are the people that are happy, joyful and 'moving onward and upward', despite pain around them, lucky? Are they blessed? Do they suffer less? Do they have more faith in a higher power? Have they evolved? Are they enlightened? Have they been through enough therapy or taken enough pills?

Is changing perspective enough to truly make changes? Is a change in viewpoint enough to effectively numb the pain or delay suffering long enough to create new neural pathways? Is limiting our own consistent return to the thoughts of suffering (in reality, or in our mind), the ticket to finding the staircase out of the quagmire?

I do truly believe that attitude and faith can alter reality. However, changing that at the core of one's being could be a life long process for some. How will this country change its attitude to end it's suffering? How will this country climb out?