Consider and Reconsider

 

A nice piece of reality from a September walk near home. Photo by me, September 2025.

If you read, watch or listen to the news, then you might be convinced that the world is falling apart. This feeling is not something new, but it is amplified more now via the internet, but the world has kind of always been falling apart with global crises, murders and all sorts of calamity and mayhem unfolding in the words of reporters between the advertisements. The world is a chaotic place, though when focusing on the United States, it certainly appears more chaotic than recent decades, at least since the 1960s. Whether that chaos is good or bad or even to what degree probably depends on your political bent, as most everyone online is acting out their performative political obsession, which is now bleeding into reality, from shaking their heads at every perceived slight injustice, from attacking strangers for different opinions, boycotts of retail stores or television networks to the far extreme act of assassination.

Having been born after the sixties in the early seventies, I have no personal experience with that decade. The sixties was a decade I learned about as vivid images and stale words in history books in the eighties. My assumption is that to the average person living in the United States in the suburbs or a small town, it probably seemed like a crazy time to be alive with political assassinations, Vietnam, Kent State, the Manson family murders, the civil rights movement, Woodstock and so on. There was one big difference between then and now: it was much easier to avoid the news and keep it at a healthy distance.

If you did not watch the network evening news or read the newspapers, then you were detached from what was happening in the cities or in far-flung places like California or Vietnam. The news on television was not close to home, outside your door or in your face. The news that mattered most was who was getting married, having their second child or who got a new job down at the plant. There was no internet to digitally bring all of these events to your bedroom as you pulled the covers up to your chin. The internet has brought the chaos up close and personal and the addictive intimacy of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is driving people crazy as they overdose on the news. The human brain, as powerful and adaptable as it is, cannot handle modern technology very well.

Nature is not concerned with the news. Photo by me, September 2025.

Today's world offers a person plenty to think about, consider and reconsider. I read the news and then I go out into the world and enjoy what is in that moment and in my presence, or at least I try. Keeping the news in a proper perspective and at a distance helps me stay sane. I do not make policy or battle criminals and whatever is going to happen is going to happen no matter what I may think. I am an observer of the larger world and a participant in my much, much smaller life. I foster my opinions mostly in private, rarely on social media and share a few on this website or in my books. It would be impossible and unwise to comment on subjects I know little about or do not care to know enough to have a solid opinion.

Here is one solid opinion of mine: the world would be better if people lacking self-control did not rush half-cocked to social media to fire off emotionally inflamed words. Once the haze of the dopamine rush clears, they are left to look like a fool; whether they see it or not, others do and they remember it. It is worth remembering and often forgotten, but the world does not revolve around you; you are only along for a temporary ride through the vast emptiness of space. There is a benefit in stepping back from the keyboard, putting the phone down, going for a walk, reading a book, watching a movie, meditating or doing something better with the time you have.

 

After a few miles I sat and considered the world near home and what mattered the most. Photo by me, September 2025.

Do not lose perspective.

R.E.M. It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)