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Catch the news?
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Catch the news?
  Do you read or watch much national news? Have you formed the impression that the world outside is frighteningly dark and dangerous, and you’d be much better off having nothing to do with it? There’s no reason to go out there anyway. If you have a job, you’re bound to lose it – everyone is. If you don’t have a job, there aren’t any to get. Best to just huddle inside and watch the news until they turn off your electricity and satellite service and foreclose on your house.  If you’re brave enough to sneak a peek outside your window, you might see wildflowers blooming all over, trees heavy with fruit or forming big, sticky buds, birds building their nests and bees visiting blooms.  Silly Nature, going about Spring as if there were no “significantly bleaker economic outlook than just one month ago” (Reuters, Feb. 19); as if it didn’t know “the country is trapped in a vortex of plunging consumer demand, rising joblessness and a deepening crisis in the banking system” (New York Times, Feb. 6); as if completely unaware that “conditions for the nation's workers deteriorated last month at an unrelenting pace” (Washington Post, Feb. 7). All those adjectives — bleak, plunging, unrelenting — were sparked by news that the nation’s unemployment level hit 7.6 percent in January. Does anyone else remember the eighties? The Bureau of Labor Statistics does, and its Web site will build you a clever chart if you want to go remind yourself.  In January, 1981 unemployment was at 7.5 percent. By December of that year it was at 8.5 percent and, yes, it got worse. A lot worse. It hit its zenith of 10.8 percent in December 1982, and although it dropped steadily after that, it didn’t get below 7 percent again until January 1986.  And yet, many of us who remember the eighties are still alive to talk about it. Think about that when you’re trying to restore your perspective on today’s conditions. My friend Beth, a psychologist who sometimes treats people suffering from anxiety, depression and feelings of hopelessness, says she reminds patients that the news stories they see, hear and read are by definition the exceptions, not the rule—that they won’t see, read or hear of the millions of people still working, the millions of children going to school and learning things, the hundreds of planes that land safely every day, because those things are not news. Beth, a former journalist, says she often prescribes “news fasts” because being bombarded with dire news affects peoples’ perceptions, and their ability to overcome anxiety, depression and feelings of hopelessness.  My friend Mary, in her Spiritual Smart Aleck column of Feb. 14, summed up the nation’s economic woes elegantly: “We are being stripped of our illusions of what security is. It ain’t money. This might be a good year to consider what security is.” It’s possible security is different for all of us. I think most of mine is my family and friends. A big part of it, certainly, is wildflowers, trees heavy with fruit, big, sticky buds, birds building their nests and bees visiting blooms — the knowledge that Nature goes about its business, regardless of economies, politics, wars or whether we’re paying attention.  I won’t go on a news fast, but I will temper my doses of disaster with many trips outside. I’ll be working toward security, i.e., the trees and vines and bushes that are going to make fruit for me soon. But I’m keeping an eye out for deranged chimpanzees.  |
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