A Wild Week

We were out of town last week, enjoying time with friends in the Cooperstown and Lake George areas of New York. The weather was mild, and we took part in several fun activities, including a hike up Prospect Mountain that really shook the cobwebs out. If you have not visited that part of the US, you really should make the attempt. It is wild and beautiful.

We did not turn the TV on while we were away. Not even once. And yet there was a continued barrage of news announcements that were forced into our consciousness, and all of them were shocking.

This last week there was a plane crash with 241 fatalities, there were missile strikes between Iran and Israel, and there were attacks on two public servants and their spouses in Minnesota, resulting in two deaths. Finally, on the day we flew home there were massive demonstrations protesting the current government’s policies which could have been violent but thankfully they were peaceful.  I still can’t help feeling shell-shocked and I am even more reluctant to turn on the TV news for fear of what the next horror might be.

We have the whole world in front of us at any one time thanks to modern media. This might have been considered a good development once upon a time, but now it is all just too much. For the sake of maintaining sanity, we must make choices about what to attend to on an hourly basis, or we over-thinkers will be overwhelmed by the horror of it all.

There are shocking events with both human and non-human causes happening all the time, and there always have been, but our generation is the first to have to choose what we pay attention to, for the sake of sanity. No prior generation was as closely connected to the rest of the world as we now are. And in the midst of all the shocking things happening on a national and international scale, we have to go on with our own lives, and deal with our own private crises too.

So, what is the best way to deal with all of this? I suppose the best advice I can give is to say that we should only focus on what we can control and a good way to do that is to limit exposure to any of the media. But if you are going to look at media news, try to pick a couple of sources so that you get more than one point of view. Do not let yourself be swayed by the myriads of sources of misinformation that are blasted into the cybersphere. And don’t ever pass on anything without attributing it to the original source. That prevents the reader/viewer from checking the validity of the writing, a process that is absolutely vital.

Other things you can do to limit your exposure to all the crazy, harmful things you cannot control are to get out and enjoy the open sky, trees and waterways, to spend time in prayer and meditation, and to stay closely connected to friends and family. Social isolation is a killer. We were not made to be alone.

Sometimes (often) I wish I lived in a simpler time, when the connection to the land was strong and the air was clean and pure, when the only noise was the song of the birds and the rustle of the leaves as the breeze blew through the trees.  It was only a few hundred years ago that it was rare for people to move too far away from where they were born. While that might have been stultifying for some, it was deeply satisfying for others. I have lived a peripatetic life and that is why writing a novel set in a time when people were closely connected to the land was cathartic for me.  I can return to that setting any time, in my mind, and I find peace there.