Is It All Too Much?
It used to be that we knew about the things taking place in our local lives. Small town newspaper, person to person relaying of information. There was TV, local news, nightly news, but these were on for limited times each day, thirty minutes, an hour, and we received measured amounts of the disturbing events going on in our world.
Switch the channel to today, and what could be more different? News is on twenty-four seven, back to back programs with more upsetting events trailing in print across the bottom of the screen, even as we try to process the alarm being relayed to us by the current on-screen anchor. Many of us have a cell phone in our hand at the same time. We scroll through Facebook or Instagram, reading posts where people scream their opinions on things that are upsetting to them.
Think about what our brains and hearts are trying to process and make sense of today.
Before social media, I didn’t see daily posts that show horses being hauled to kill pens for slaughter. I didn’t see ranting posts from people humiliating and torturing their dogs. I didn’t see posts from people demeaning others for their views on things they disagree with. I didn’t see malicious posts from journalists happy to hear the news that our president has tested positive for covid-19.
I don’t understand cruelty. I don’t understand meanness. I don’t understand hatred. All of these things have never been more visible in our world. A constant stream of images and words that prove this truth.
I know in my earlier years of life bad things happened all the time. And maybe I did walk around in a pair of rose-colored glasses. I’ve always tried to see the good in people. To believe that we all want the best for each other and for all living creatures. I just don’t know if it’s true anymore. I want it to be. I so want it to be.
I know that, ultimately, we each have to help in the areas of our lives where we are able to make a difference. But if we don’t lead with kindness, with the desire and intent to treat everything and everyone in our lives, and with whom we cross paths each day, as we ourselves want to be treated, then we will continue to be bombarded with this constant stream of what is wrong in our world. Because so much is wrong.
And I do believe we are all being affected by the ugliness we see in front of us. Technology has given us the ability to bear witness to more of it than I believe we can deal with.
I can only pray that we will each be struck with a desire to be different from what we are witnessing, to individually act by the golden rule we were taught early in life. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
What else can possibly work?
And we need to start seeing the good in this world. But we can only see it if it rises up in every possible word and action. If it becomes a tsunami of intent that washes away the horrible, the unacceptable. We can’t continue to see what we’re seeing every hour of the day. It’s just too much.