Do you ever watch or read the news and feel seriously depressed afterward? Is it me or are we being bombarded day and night with awful news? It is becoming harder and harder to find anything positive to focus on each day if you are aware of what is going on in the world.
First there are the natural disasters. It feels like at least once a week, we are dealing with the aftermath of a tornado or two, an earthquake in some remote 3rd world setting, devastating fires, floods, sinkholes, mudslides or draught. It is hard to comprehend and to keep feeling empathy for all of the people that suffer from these disasters. You only have SO MUCH empathy. You would be feeling sorry all day long if you really paid close attention to all the natural disasters that happen on a daily basis. The earth is a violent place in that context. The oceans, the land and the atmosphere are constantly in flux and wreaking havoc as they shift and reshape themselves each day.
Then there are the man made disasters. There are tons of those; we are responsible for them and we hear about them around the clock. There are the murders, the rapes, property crimes. There is devastation in financial markets, loss of jobs, pollution, terrorism, piracy, plane crashes, car crashes, child abuse, bridge collapses, train derailments, ships sinking, endless wars.
Are you depressed yet? I am!!
I am what I would consider a news hound. I look at the news online several times a day. For some reason, I want to be on the cutting edge of knowing what the up to the minute latest news is. This is purely an internet phenomenon for me. I was never this addicted to the news before the internet. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have a newspaper subscription. There were days, especially when my children were young, that I didn't even know the current news. If I didn't have time to catch the headlines on TV, the news day would just pass me by and I would be none the worse for the wear.
Sometimes I think I should try to take a day off from news headlines. I might feel more relaxed and less stressed if I did. What harm would come to me if I was unaware of an earthquake in Indonesia, a flood in South America? What if I didn't hear about the latest shooting in Dorchester, or the most recent plane crash? And what if I didn't get the latest Bimbo count in the Tiger Woods saga? Would I feel out of the loop? I know this, when I hear the news a day or two after it has happened I always feel like I missed the boat and I can never get caught up with the information.
This is not a new phenomenon for me. This is not the product of unemployment. I was a news hound when I was working too. When I took a break, I would always pop onto Fox News or CNN websites to get updated on the latest. I do have more time now to analyze what I see though and thus have a blog to rant about it!!
What does this all mean for us as a culture, us as humans? It means nothing big can happen without everyone around the world knowing about it. A major disaster occurs and an almost instantaneous charity fund is set up to help the victims. A child is abused and there is a flood of calls from people willing to adopt the child. People are left homeless from a fire and piles of clothing and household goods are donated from all over.
There is really nothing we can do to change the 24/7 availability of information. It is the world we live in now. We can opt to be informed, hyper-informed (like me) or ill-informed. That part is up to the individual. We can take a news break or a technology vacation. It is probably a good idea for everyone to do that once in a while. Vacation is a great time to try to do that; it will help with relaxation and enjoyment of personal time.
W can also try, in our news hound sniffing ways, to find the tiny amount of positive news each day. We can look for it. It is possible to find something to be happy about every day in the news. You just have to look harder. Good news doesn't usually make headlines.
A lot of bad news stories have positive elements in them. The one that springs into my head is the story of Sully Sullenberger, the pilot that landed the airplane in the Hudson River last year and saved the lives of every person on board his plane. You can't help but smile and feel proud of him when you think of how that story could have gone. It was freezing cold that day, he was an older man, with a plane full of people. He had almost no other options than to land the plane in the water, a feat that usually ends in disaster. He not only landed it smoothly without any power, he made sure each and every person was off the plane and rescued before he left the plane. He is the true definition of a hero in my book, and his actions were nothing short of miraculous.
Almost every time there is an earthquake in a 3rd world setting, they find someone that has survived,against all odds, having been buried by rubble for many days. That's another example of a positive story inside the bad news. If you can't find a whole positive news story, at least try to look for the silver lining in that dark cloud story. They are there, you just have to dig.
As for me, I will probably continue to be a news hound. That is the essence of Ivy2010. She is heavily news driven. Maybe my next version will be less news centric; more centered on the ethereal. We will have to wait and see where Ivy2011 and life takes me!
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