How Much is Too Much?

           My mother loves to forward me things, often involving outrageous political happenings or things I might not have seen in the news for being so busy with dogs and goats and gardens. (Sadly I see more than she knows.)

Between ISIS beheadings and the Holly Bobo updates alone, I admit, tis week I turned off my TV…I confess...thinking on these things in detail puts me in fetal position, then again, to observe the news passively while microwaving a pizza feels even more wrong…So I replt to my mother with, “I’m sorry, no, I didn’t hear…I’m on a news sabbatical. My heart can’t take it anymore.”

            Her reply was something about an ostrich, which didn’t set well either. On the other hand, if a caller in my past life had said it, I’d have given it more thought…and so I did so here...for her...the woman who birthed me.

            In truth Mom, I am watching the news. (Like an addict, I feel I should confess this to someone.) What’s more, I am mindful of just how MUCH news I am consuming...How much we all are.  As it pertains to my own personal consumption—I find myself asking, how much is too much?  (Truth be told, I get so much more done creatively on non-TV days and I so admire my writer friends who don’t have a TV at all.) But for me, there’s still a gene that gets on a roll from time to time when wanting to catch up, but once I do…it doesn’t take long until I want to unplug all over again.

            I was in such mood when the ostrich note came through…which exacerbated my thinking all over again on the matter.

            I have found that my intake of news works in inverse proportion to my ability to write, think, create, or grow a garden. When my heart becomes too heavy for trying to imagine the horror some have endured (the Holly Bobo story alone I cannot fathom. I want to cry every time I hear the girl’s name and if I allow myself so much as a minute of imagining her fear, or the grief of her family's loss, I grow fearful myself, and after that, helpless, and after that, hopeless)…It leaves me so utterly derailed …I don’t know what to do.

            So the question becomes: What is the responsible approach to news? Where am I to file beheadings over which I have no control (save to become furious and more fearful)…Killings so brutal the details only add more hatred and anger in a world already too dark already?

            At one time I naively suggested: “Call your congressman…Express yourself. Be sure and vote!” But anymore, given how we feel about government, well that just adds more fuel to the flame…More frustration, anger and resentment…Great.  Now that I know this WILL be my reaction …Do I really want to go there?

            My own approach to this question has changed with time and with age. At one point I sincerely believed that focusing my attention and yours on the problems we all face, while debating both pros / cons and every alternative in between was the highest and best use of a journalist’s talents and time. But after about 20 years of seeing no real solutions, but instead a digression into an angrier, less civil audience, well,  I changed my tune. I no longer felt I was helping matters. Instead, I felt I was contributing more to the problem than any hope of a solution. I recall one boss asking if I could “save the world on someone else’s dime” and I remember thinking “He may have a point."  If anger is what you’re looking for, and anger is what I am NOT looking for, maybe it WAS my time to go.

            With that I did what I always do when troubled by something to my core. Moments like these, I stop. And I listen. By stop and listen, I mean I eventually unplug entirely, pull away from the maddening crowed, get silently alone and ask, “What possible good can I contribute, for which others may be served?” With this I usually go away somewhere (to a monastery; out of the country…or (as is the case today) maybe just TO the country)….In these sacred spaces, I can honestly say, I have always found my answers.

            To be clear, my own inner answers are not everyone’s answers. Right now, my mother’s voice prompts her to forward emails she feels we should all be aware of; she’s feeling very politically vocal right now, and if that’s what she’s being led to do, may I just say "You go for it Mom!"

            For me, I did that once. Who knows; I may be led again someday (can’t imagine that, but that’s the thing about the inner voice; it demands a day by day inventory).

            My answer as I shared it with my mom was this:

            Today's news is precisely why I farm. Whether worried over the war in Syria, or watching our president weigh strategies per the beheadings, or witnessing raging wild fires out West, my inner voice says, there may come a time when knowing how, will be all you can do...So today—this day, LEARN. Learn everything you can, for now, on your side of the street, life is peaceful, but there may come a time when it is not, and if that day comes, be prepared. Better yet, be ready to help. Make use of the wisdom, time and gifts you’re now being handed…The farmer who shows you how to plant; the course that’ll walk you through soil and crop rotation…Follow where you’re led and the rest will be provided.

            While we all face fearful times, I work not to dwell there. For if I dwell too long on any one news story my fear gene goes into overdrive and anger consumes the only energy I ever hoped to have. It’s not to become an ostrich. It is to become who I am...who each of us are...listening to what we are each led to do in whatever way, large or small, we are led to do it. 

           That, to me, is the counter to our news...