First of all, is there any other kind of news than the bad? Occasionally, yes, a “brightener” is allowed space, but can be quickly chased out of a news broadcast or written report by Breaking News of some disaster or by a dire development in an ongoing “story”.
A great mentor, Bijan Anjomi, recommends a total divorce from news reports on any media, for the good of our health and our peace of mind. This makes sense. We all know that the news media live on what’s wrong with us, and Them, and anything happening in the world, or our community.
The fact is, however, that the news can fascinate me, and has ever since my year of training as a journalist at the University of Western Ontario in the late 1950s. We gathered around the teletype machine just outside the J-lab to glean the latest on the Hungarian revolution. We stayed up all night to follow the US election results. I would have to check history to find out who won in 1956, because it wasn’t the outcome that mattered to me then. It was the process, the ups and downs of the election returns, the excitement, the suspense that kept me rapt over and wrapped around the teletype.
All that cascade of thrills was long ago and far away when I spent happy months in the back country of Provence, far from newspapers. I had to find excuses for this disloyalty to my profession of journalism. It had already dawned on me that news items fade in importance rapidly. There was a certain toll on my emotions from the roller-coaster effect of a crisis developing, peaking and diminishing - at least according to the media. I could tell myself that the whole package of a newscast on television depends on how the stories are gathered, shaped and delivered. I can still remark cynically that the language of the news anchor is deliberately designed to poke my fear buttons. And so, I argued to myself that I wouldn’t miss all the drama, and might even enjoy something like peace of mind. This proved true.
Months after my blissful stay in Provence as a recluse, I shocked a friend with my ignorance of the assassination of a bishop in Africa. That was the only world event that escaped my notice while wandering over hills fragrant with wild lavender and thyme.
Over the years since that experiment far from the media I have been developing my sensitivities in various directions - some new to me, and finding I feel the better for it. I had been reading about our hollow selves, but I couldn’t take such philosophizing too seriously. It made me think of Gilbert’s play, “Patience”, where the Poet declaims a ditty about being “hollow, hollow, hollow” and asks the fetching milkmaid if she too feels hollow. Patience replies, “Thank you, sir. I have dined.” If there is a hollow in my inner being, all the better. That’s where my imagination is free to play - imagination that has been growing muscles.
My inner world and the world around me have been on a collision course like a couple of galaxies meeting and duking it out between pieces of themselves and mostly steering clear of each other, easily avoiding any direct impact. It can be distracting. Occasionally as I scan the news out of the corner of my eye, my imagination will seize upon an item that triggers a powerful emotion, like something bad happening to a baby. My imagination fills in the horrors around the details given in the news report, and won’t let them go. Never mind that there are millions of happy babies living sweet lives, loved and cherished, gurgling and opening innocent eyes on a world of wonders. I have to teach myself to focus on these children, and stop imagining that I could have done something to protect the little one in the terrible news report.
Discipline dictates that I must focus more and more on what’s going well in the world - beginning with me. As Richard Bartlett writes, the universe will simply echo the whining and complaining of my Inner Brat when things don’t go my way. Perhaps until I get inspired by what I do want, I could step back and take a break.
I wonder what’s going on in my inner garden? Neglect? Weeding out of emotions evoking the worst of the past? Cultivating the ground for seeding sweet blooms, and watering the places where they will soon send up delicate green shoots? Can I cultivate the patience to give seedlings time to show themselves, no matter how tempted I may be to yank them up to see how they’re doing?
How’s your garden these days?
