No News is Good News!

No one has criticized me or said that I’m a bad person for avoiding the news. They’re intense in their agreement about some horror in the world, some evil doer. Do they care that I’m not joining the conversation? Sometimes, they try to engage me, and I’m forced to admit that I don’t know what they’re talking about. I was never a news junkie, but now I’m weird. For many years I was a partisan, firmly committed to the “good guys,” to the righteous team. You have to take sides.

If you don’t, you’re nuts. I saw it so clearly during my final foray into higher education. A colleague proposed a new course, Society and Religion. Great, but should it be housed in the Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Department or the Religion Department? I was teaching social work. Everyone knew where my loyalties should be. I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t care. I was worse than a traitor. I wasn’t taking the academic game seriously.

It was like bizarro baseball, invented by a summer camp co-counselor when Bizarro Superman was a cult anti-hero. We’d play softball with the kids, and when Errol hit a long drive, he’d run the bases backwards. The kids were beside themselves with frustration. Errol wasn’t taking their game seriously.

I’m not playing the news game. What’s changed? I’m not manning the barricades anymore. I’m not organizing protests or going to meetings. I’m not running from tear gas. Actually, I’m not running at all anymore. I’m happy to be walking, averaging the 7500 steps a day that my cardiologist recommended. If I’m not going to the barricades, if I’m not tackling the macro problems of the world, why do I need to know what’s happening out there? If I’m focused on tending the garden, taking care of the people in my life, how does it help me to be aggravated by the news? Life is more peaceful this way, but sometimes I feel guilty. Am I coddling myself? Yes. Maybe that’s part of getting older, learning the ways in which my body needs coddling.