// you’re reading...

filed in Daily Life

Zen and the Art of Staying Away from the News

As regular FPS readers know, I’m a news junkie. This has nothing to do with the current political environment. Even as a child, I remember devouring the NY Times (our local paper) and doing the weekly quizzes. Old habits die hard. Today, in a rare show of restraint, I turned away. I just couldn’t bear it. My close friend who has Yoda-like tendencies texted that in addition to curtailing his media viewing, he “was trying to accept the facts as they are and consider that things will work out in the end.” Words I’m trying to live by. At least today.

Illustration by Lisa Congdon

Discussion

12 comments for “Zen and the Art of Staying Away from the News”

  1. CATHERINE says:

    I wish I could believe this. I do not think things will work out. I think our world will get hotter, our rights will be fewer, and our income inequality unimaginable. Help!

    • wendy says:

      I hear you Catherine. As I write this, I’m so terribly uncomfortable and sad. I’m about to do my weekly Friday night reboot ritual and enter into what I call a worry-free zone, for 24 hours. I’ll be going to synagogue in the morning, which is a community of social justice warriors. And I’ll try to have audacious hope. I wish I had more to give you.

  2. Kathleen says:

    My spirits were lifted today when I heard that Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad got the Nobel Peace Prize for their fight against sexual violence. They are both incredibly interesting and heroic. I would love to learn more about their accomplishments.

    • wendy says:

      Yes, Kathleen. That is good news! Also, one of my heroes, Rev. William Barber, was just awarded a prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant.https://nym.ag/2yjlvmJ And on the very next day, he was arrested in front of McDonalds headquarters in Chicago, protesting in support of the minimum wage.

  3. Sinead says:

    I might need totake this advice.

    I’m appalled at what I am reading EVERY DAY. Every day – did we ever have a batting average like this before? Scandal, actually I think we’ve moved passed things being a “scandal”, now it’s “just news”.

    An eternal supply of corruption and evil in black and white. Maybe this is how things were all along, and we’ve just started to rip off the band-aid veneer. I sound so angry. I am!

    We have “just news” here in Ireland too, but I feel for America and the honest, decent Americans who find the “just news” also abhorrent. I have so many happy memories of visiting your country many times. I’ve stayed away the last 6 years, and now I don’t know when a better time will appear to visit again. And I’m just a bystander the other side of a big ocean. I’m not even living the day to day of this “just news”. I wish all of you decent, honest, appalled Americans well and better.

  4. Gigi says:

    I think it’s healthy to take a news break and just not watch or listen for a bit.

    Personally I have to because the news just overwhelms me sometimes.

    • wendy says:

      I’m definitely on a hiatus. But I heard this today, “don’t antagonize, organize. Don’t mope. Vote.”

Leave a Reply