The #1 Secret to Reducing Stress — Stop Watching the News
4/10 — Better luck next time! That was my score and admonition on the In the News Questionnaire on Brain Candy. To the uninformed, Brain Candy is one of those games that show up in my e-mail inbox daily, the sole purpose of which is to remind me that my general knowledge is severely limited; that I am not as smart as I think I am; and that fact needs to be pointed out to me daily.
I’m old enough to know my own strengths and weaknesses. If the subject is math, I don’t bother taking the test.
Music? If it’s any decade but the 1960’s and 1970’s, I skip it. Well, no, that’s not true. My son was into Heavy Metal in the 1980's so I often score not dismally on questions about Guns & Roses, Metallica, Motley Crue, and Iron Maiden. (Do YOU know who they are?)
Geography? Not as bad as math, and the process of elimination is my friend, so I give it a try.
I have a B.A. Degree in English and Secondary Education; I was an English teacher and speech/language therapist. I can whiz through books and authors, English grammar, and any English language questions. I enthusiastically jump on those.
And the News? Hey, I’m a Baby Boomer. I lived through the 1960’s. Was there a decade more volatile and news-packed than the 60’s? I witnessed it first-hand. I discussed all of it in my college classes. Vietnam War protests, 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention riots, Civil rights marches, and 3 assassinations in 5 years.
I went on to live through the 70’s. The 1970 Kent State student killing, a decades-long war ending in humiliating defeat, as the world watched Americans frantically scrambling to reach helicopters scooping them out of a war they escalated and prolonged. The Watergate scandal, an unprecedented United States’ president’s resignation, gas shortages, the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Between 1970, when we married, up until 2010 when my husband’s Alzheimer’s Disease advanced to the point that he neither understood nor remembered the news, he and I never missed a nightly news segment, the prime time cable news shows, or the Sunday morning news talk shows.
I knew the news. I lived through it; I watched it; discussed it; was angered by it. I was spurred to action by it.
So now it’s May 2022. Given what I have just told you about my news background, how did I score a 4/10 on an easy current news quiz? Because out of all I have seen and lived through as described above, I have never been as stressed and depressed by the news as I am now. I’ve had a lifetime of news stress. I have lost my ability to tolerate more of it, so I quit watching it.
IF I do turn on the nightly news, I see:
*The world on the brink of WWIII while the entire planet watches unthinkable atrocities perpetrated against innocent civilians, being carried out daily by a crazy, but highly intelligent(the most dangerous kind), calculating despot, destroying a neighboring country with the unrelenting bombing, murder, genocide, and heinous barbarism, against fellow humans, unlike anything I have witnessed in my lifetime.
*The clock being turned backward on every social reform we fought so hard to win. I see:
*Book banning
*Voter suppression
*The demonization of truth in education
*The loss of women’s rights to control their own bodies
*The loss of journalism integrity — news outlets slanting the news to align with the ideology of their company head
*The sanction of teaching hatred and bigotry to children
In the midst of this, I’ve had my own share of personal heartache, life-threatening health issues, and a financial meltdown. So much so that if I don’t get some peace and stability in my life, I am at high risk of a recurrence of the pulmonary blood clots that almost killed me, but this time in my brain, which will cause a stroke, finishing off what the pulmonary blood clots started.
So I chose self-preservation over watching the nightly news. I skim the written headlines enough to know:
*What NFTs are. Hah! Bet you didn’t see that one coming. In simple Baby Boomer language, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are collectibles like art that don’t exist until you pay lots of dollars for them, and then you can’t even touch them. They exist “virtually”. In even simpler Baby Boomer language, it means that our children don’t want our Lladro or Precious Memory statues. They don’t like the stuff you can touch. I don’t understand much of it, and I could be wrong in my feeble explanation, but if you click this NFT link, you can read about them and maybe have more of a clue than me as to what it all means.
*That Donald Trump’s skin is made of Teflon
*That Jessica Watkins was the first black woman (Is that a politically incorrect moniker now? I can’t keep up. African American? Woman of Color?) launched up to the ISS (International Space Station) — It shouldn’t matter what color or sex she is.
*That Amy Schneider, a trans woman is #2 in games won and #4 in money won in the history of Jeopardy. The press needs to stop informing us about her sexual orientation. It’s none of our business and shouldn’t matter.
*That the current Jeopardy 20+ game-winning streak champion, Mattea Roach, is a lesbian. The press needs to stop informing us of her sexual orientation. It’s none of our business and shouldn’t matter.
*That Naomi Judd, one half of one of the most successful country music acts in history succumbed to years of mental illness and died by her own hand.
See, I know stuff. Just not enough stuff to pass the Brain Candy News Quiz.
Because I decided my mental health was more important to me than what goes on in the news, I quit watching what will cause me to die of stress quicker than to die of a Russian bomb hitting my house.
I’m old. I’ve paid attention to the news. I’ve protested. I’ve attended speeches and rallies. I’ve worked for causes and candidates in which I believed. I’ve earned my rest. I’ve earned the right to be selfish and clueless. So there you have it — why I don’t watch the news anymore and scored a dismal 4/10 on the Brain Candy News Quiz.
©Copyright 2022 Joan Gershman
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