The news should come with a warning label: “Watch this program at your own risk.” Its a very sad commentary on today’s news media that we have to question whether what we’re watching/reading has been manufactured.
A friend recently commented to me that she as she was watching the news one evening and realized that all she saw and heard was hyped and manufactured chaos — could the world really be this bad? Isn’t there any good news? She changed the channel, but that accomplished little more than seeing a different talking head spewing the same embellished, depressing fear mongering. Curious about this, I decided to ask some older friends and family members about the news in their day — what they told me was a real eye opener and basically, it boiled down to this: there were wars, global health scares, civil unrest and political “shenanigans” in their day too, but, those stories were not politicized or monetized by the news media…they were simply reported on with monotone, factual statement. In other words, the news had not yet become a major for-profit, corrupted industry, like we have today.
So the news can really get us down, right? Of course it can. Should it? Yes, to some degree, but the truth is, we know that what we’re being fed now is politicized by the right and left and monetized by corporate fat cats, so maybe its not all doom and gloom — somewhere out there, there really is a whole lot of good happening…but that doesn’t sell, does it?
This wonderful piece has made its way around social media and its really a wonderful reminder of how each of us needs to find and hold onto our own inspiration:
87-year-old man rewrites news headlines for 2020 … and inspires us all
Sometimes I just want it to stop. Talk of COVID, protests, looting, brutality. I lose my way. I become convinced that this “new normal” is real life. Then I meet an 87-year-old who talks of living through polio, diphtheria, Vietnam protests and yet is still enchanted with life.
He seemed surprised when I said that 2020 must be especially challenging for him. “No,” he said slowly, looking me straight in the eyes. “I learned a long time ago to not see the world through the printed headlines, I see the world through the people that surround me. I see the world with the realization that we love big. Therefore, I just choose to write my own headlines. “Husband loves wife today.“ “Family drops everything to come to Grandma’s bedside.” He patted my hand. “Old man makes new friend.”
His words collide with my worries, freeing them from the tether I had been holding tight. They float away. I am left with a renewed spirit. My headline now reads “Woman overwhelmed by the spirit of kindness and the reminder that our capacity to love is never-ending .”
– Source and author unknown
This is very profound. Love is all around us and our capacity to love, forgive, help and embrace our fellow man is never ending. Yes, the headlines can bring us down. Yes, world events are dire…but not all of them. Yes, things can seem dark…but only if we let the darkness win. The news today is tainted and that’s just a fact. The news these days is a highly competitive, for-profit venture taken over by corporate interests and they have a vested interest in scaring us, worrying us and even intimidating us. But, we let them get away with that and we shouldn’t — we must never let them dictate our headlines, because we must write our own.
We all have the power to set our own course in this world and we have the capacity and ability to seek out the brighter side of life — we of course cannot deny negative events, but we certainly don’t have to allow corrupted news organizations to twist the truth into something much worse than it may be.
So my friends, today, commit to not letting the over-paid talking heads or the screaming hysterical headlines define your world view — only you should do that.
