Bringing Mae Flowers

The balance between staying informed and staying sane is a fragile one.

News cycles have become shorter and shorter until we are bombarded with an unending onslaught of bad news. I don’t think the human mind was ever meant to handle so much information coming from so many places all at once. It’s no wonder that so many of us shut down. We want to be informed. We want to care. But with so much mental stimulation, we become apathetic instead.

But that’s the goal, isn’t it?

Maybe it’s just another conspiracy theory, but I think the overwhelming nature of new media is a feature, not a bug. Keeping us doom-scrolling doesn’t just boost their viewership numbers, but it also keeps us burnt-out and complacent. Anxiety and exhaustion are the greatest tools against change. Who has the energy or the will to fight, when we can’t focus on a single cause to fight for?

Ignorance is violence.

I don’t believe that we should bury our heads in the sand and ignore everything that is happening. Ignorance may be bliss, but silence is complacency. We cannot ignore it all in hopes that it will all go away, but we also cannot allow the bombardment of news consume our lives. The key is in finding balance, and that will look different to everyone. For some, balance may come in only looking at news stories once a day. For others, it may be alternating between “bad” news and “good” news. The goal is to find a system that works for you.

We need to weather the storm the best we can.

We’ve all become so used to trying to ride through the storm, that we forget that we need to reef the sails. We may not be able to control the weather around us, but we can protect our ship to survive the swells. This doesn’t mean that we give up and let the waves pull us under. Nor does it mean that we let the storms blow us completely off-course. The thunder will roar and the wind will howl, but we can’t let the noise paralyze us with fear.