We know that we must
to lay claim to any respectability
or competence keep up with the news
that’s why we’ve ringed the earth with satellites
crisscrossed it with fiber optic cables
and created networks of news bureaus
that inform us with urgency
of pretty much any event
to have unfolded anywhere on the planet
in the last few moments
we’re, furthermore, equipped with tiny devices
that we keep very close to hand
so as to monitor all unfolding stories
in close to real time
we’ve been grounded a ringside seat
on the second by second flow of history
As a result we see a lot more
And at the same time,
strangely, we see a lot less.
The constant presence of news from without hampers
our ability to pick up on an equally important,
though far less prestigious source of news
from within. We are not, by nature,
well equipped to see inside ourselves.
Consciousness bobs
like a small boat on a sea of disavowed emotions.
A lot of feelings and ideas require a high
degree of courage to confront.
They threatento make us uncomfortably anxious, excited
or sad were we to learn more about them.
Sowe use the news without to silence the news
from within. We have the most prestigious
excuse ever invented never to spend any time
roaming freely inside our own minds.
It isnot that the news from without is unimportant
to someone ( indeed,
it will be the most important thing in certain people ’ s lives a continent
away or in a company in the capital or somewhere
in the upper reaches of government ), it ’ s
just that this news is almost
certainly wholly disconnected from our real priority over the
coming years; which is to make the most
of our life and our talents in the time that remains to us.
It is touching that we should give so much
of our curiosity over to strangers,
but it is poignant
that we are forced eventually to pay such a high price for this constant
dispersal of energy.
We dismiss fragile,
tentative thoughts about what we should do next, who
we should call, what we really need to do,
thoughts upon which an adequate future for
us depends – for the sake of the more obvious drama of the moment.
But the drama won’t
save us, and cares not a jot
about our development or our real responsibilities.
It feels counter-intuitive
to think that there might be certain things more important than the news.
But there is:
our own lives – which we have, troublingly,
been granted such prestigious reasons and means
to avoid confronting.
We can educate ourselves in the art of being calm.
Not through special teas or slow breathing but through thinking.