SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 – If you’re on the “normal” spectrum during most of your waking hours, the news over the past few years has doubtless left you “not so normal” on any objective scale of psychological conditions. The only antidote besides mind-altering substances is a hard break from “breaking news.”
I’m 36 hours into cold-turkey withdrawal from the ubiquitous, omnipresent narcotic of our times. World afire? World under water? Crazy, angry people on the loose? A pandemic still killing 1,000 Americans a day because millions of Americans won’t get their shots? What am I forgetting? Hmmm, there’s got to be something, someone, somewhere . . . oh yeah—how could I not remember the wall-to-wall coverage of . . . drumroll . . . Afghanistan!
Oops! I just picked at the scabs that had formed over the lacerations to my psyche, but you catch my drift. Ignore stuff and before long, it dissipates into cosmic vapor, granting reprieve from the black hole of “breaking news.”
I acknowledge that some “news” is important to know—for example, that millions of unvaccinated people “mandate” that I must continue wearing a mask whenever I go out in public; that because lots of people fear being “tread on,” I must fear them; that climate change is altering life as we’ve been living it; that You-Know-Who still commands Retrograde Party fealty. And so on. But for a couple more days, a week, perhaps longer, I’m planning to pan for bliss in the river of ignorance.
When I feel the impulse to check one of my go-to newsfeeds, I divert my attention by one of a thousand extraneous thoughts not involving TV, smartphone or laptop. For now, a noun—any noun—seems to work effectively, and over the decades, I’ve built up an ample storehouse of nouns. For example, an impulse—“check NYT online”—flashes inside my brain. Before another quarter of the brain can direct my hand to open my smartphone browser and click on NYT—a nano-second, mind you—that brain shouts, “stick.” (I have no idea why “stick” jumped to, as it were, just now, but it did.) I then use “stick” to knock myself lightly over the head and divert myself from the original impulse to check the news. (From a comprehensive perspective, I guess a verb comes into play, as well.)
In other cases, the process is more complex. Rather than diverting an impulse, which takes a split-second, I need to break an established routine. One such habit is watching the evening network news. With smartphone alarm set for 5:25 p.m. I’d then put aside all demands and distractions and turn on the TV, rotating among ABC, CBS, and NBC, mainly for anchor face variety, and pay full attention starting at 5:30.
At the appointed time yesterday, I was saved by the bell . . . er, ringtone . . . of my smartphone, ironically. It was a call that would take me well past the evening news.
“Is this an okay time to talk?” the caller asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Often it takes a village to break a harmful habit.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
