The Briar Philosopher - Close to Home (FREE ACCESS)

There’s a whole lot going on in the country and across the globe right now. Much of it can be troublesome and keep a body pondering all the implications and possibilities connected to the daily news on the national scene and abroad.  I’m one of those people who follow the news and always have been. While other kids were consuming entertaining shows, I was watching the news, national and local, every day that I could. Walter Cronkite was a companion pretty much every evening. His demeanor and straightforward reporting of the news, without spin and without telling me how I should feel about it, gave me confidence that I could grow to understand the world around me. The key, it seemed, was to stick to facts and truths and not let my emotions sway me into believing only the things I wanted to believe. 

There isn’t much reporting these days that sticks to his guidelines. I can’t seem to find a news outlet on television that is truly objective. They all spin and color and lean one direction or the other until it’s really hard to pull the facts from the fray of opinion and agenda. That, in and of itself, makes the news these days more worrisome. People are very good at negativity bias as well as confirmation bias. We tend to believe awful stories, and we tend to believe stories that align with our own beliefs and opinions, whether they are factual or not. Since the news has pretty much become just another marketing outlet for people trying to sell something, it then becomes of paramount importance to the industry that folks tune in and watch the news (secondarily) and the ads (primarily). I really think it used to be the other way around. Knowing the implicit bias in a great deal of our culture, it’s easy to spin things to feel more like world wrestling than actual news stories. Everything is “Breaking News,” whether it is or not. Everything is conflict and controversy, good guys vs bad guys, wherever you might tune in. Doesn’t matter if it’s Fox or CNN, sensationalism sells.  The more this programming plan takes over the airwaves, the less I am inclined to glue myself to the screen or the feed. It’s just too much, and knowing it's designed to make me feel caught up in controversy makes it even worse. 

Don’t get me wrong. I still make sure I am as informed as possible without getting a migraine or losing too much sleep. I do this by trying to focus more on what is closer to home. It’s not that the bigger picture doesn’t affect us locally. It does in many ways. It’s just that there is plenty to take care of closer to our door, and those things need and deserve our attention. 

One example of that is our dog Lucy. She has a couple of broken ribs and a spinal injury that we have been nursing for several weeks now with the help of Annville Vet Clinic. Such care takes attention and diligence. We also had a young cat that needed rehoming. It’s the first time I’m ever rehomed and critter, and it was very, very hard to let him go, having known him since the day he was born, but it was necessary, and now he’s somewhere that he can get the kind of attention he deserves. Added to that are the daily concerns and scheduling. We were fortunate enough again this year to be invited to play a few songs for the Jackson County Cancer Fund’s Festival of Hope. It is always an honor to play the Festival and do some small part in helping to raise money for this very worthy cause. Practicing for that needed time and attention as well, and we weren’t willing to give it a half effort. The Boy and I are both folks who try to do our best at anything we do. We are both of a mind that if you’re going to bother doing something, it's worth it to put your best into it. 

Yes, we may indeed be touched by the current political climate. Cuts to programs many of us rely on could cause financial hardship for our poorest neighbors. Some may lose healthcare. Some may find it harder to overcome addiction without funded treatment centers and programs that make it easier to transition back into the workforce. Such things we should keep in mind as anything that affects members of our community can affect us all in the long run. But it is also true that we cannot endlessly dwell on such things. We must wrestle our minds back to what is close to home and do what good we can for our neighbors, our families and ourselves. Every act of kindness and generosity creates ripples in the lives of others and in our own lives, even kindness to the animals that share the planet with us. There is no such thing as worthless love, worthless empathy, or worthless compassion as long as we remember that Love is a Verb and treat it as such.