What Happens When You Turn Off The News? Life.

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.”
--Anne Lamott, author

The “off” button.

Lately I’ve been hitting this button a lot.  On my radio when the news gets much too depressing or crazy, especially when the voice of one particular office holding bully comes on. On my TV when the local news weather person tells me for the 15th time in the last half hour that a wicked storm is coming our way. Thanks for the update! On my laptop when I’ve scrolled through all my news sites and find nothing but bad news to read, as if that is the only news in our world. On my phone when I jump from story to story about the trade war and the impeachment crisis and the looming possible government shutdown and yes, the 2020 election. Really? ALREADY?!

ENOUGH!

And so, I hit the “off” button, click the remote, close out the web page, and mute the dinging notification sound on my smart phone. And guess what? It makes me happy. It calms my soul. It slows down the beating of my heart. It lowers my anxiety level about the state of this world, which if I believed everything I read and heard and saw—I might conclude we are all going to hell in a handbasket.

I’m not quite sure how I got to this point in my life, being so tethered, so addicted to the screens all around me. Not so sure how I fell down the rabbit’s hole of needing to see the absolute latest news and know the right now news and consume all the fast-breaking news 24/7.  At least I’m not alone in my addiction. According to the Nielsen Company that tracks media consumption, the average American now spends 11 hours and 21 minutes a day, every day, consuming media.  That’s more than half our waking hours.  And I know that at least for me the bulk of that media consumption is the news. The headlines. Reports about current events.

I once loved being a news junkie.  Reading two or three newspapers a day.  Listening to NPR morning and night.  Talking politics with family and friends. But no more.

Because what now passes for news? It’s not really the news. Flip through the biggest news channels and websites—Fox News, CNN, MSNBC—and you’ll quickly notice that most of what is being reported is not news but opinion.  Not news but commentary. Not news but gossip or talking heads yelling at each other or smug anchors telling us just what we are supposed to believe.  About the news. About the state of the world.

Time for that “off” button again.

I can’t take much more of our current dystopian journalism because relatively speaking, our world right now is what it has always been and always will be. Good and bad. Hopeful and hard. Beautiful and broken. The conceit of every generation is to imagine that their times are the worst of times, that now is so much worse than then. That we are suffering through unprecedented times. News flash.  In the 20th century alone our nation (and parents and grandparents) survived and overcame two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, political assassinations, Watergate and Vietnam. And we are still here.

Have you found the “off” button yet?

An informed citizenry is an absolute necessity for a healthy democracy. That is not the challenge we face as news consumers in 2019. We’ve got more news and more information and more insight into the inner workings of our government and world than ever before in human history.  We just don’t know how to sift through the news and separate it from the noise and so we are tempted to just consume everything put in front of us.  Like the hungry diner who stands before an overflowing buffet table: we don’t know when to stop eating. But there is one surefire way of going on a healthy news diet.

Use the “off” button.

Here’s what you can expect if you take that radical action.  More time to watch a gorgeous God blessed sunrise as you walk the dog on a soft summer morning.  Time to pay attention at your kid’s little league baseball game as you munch on a tasty hot dog and talk balls and strikes with the person next to you in the stands.  Time to just take a deep breath and know you are alive! Or ride your bicycle or hug and kiss your spouse for no reason or just be grateful for all the gifts of God that you have in this life.  Freedom. Work. People to love and people who love you.  A universe that, while sometimes is cruel, is also an amazing and miraculous place.

The “off” button.  Find it. Use it.  The good news is that the news can wait.