(Dieser Post ist auch auf deutsch verfügbar: ,,Widerwillens” )

When I talk about how I cope with the influences all around me, people often look a me funny. What I mean in particular is, when I talk about news and my intake of news.

I don’t watch news. I try to avoid them. Every once in a while I’m confronted with some news or other but this I only bear reluctantly. And when I’m force fed those news, I’m usually reminded why I stay away from them, afterwards.

I even would go as far as proclaiming that I live much better without watching or consuming any news. Better than anyone taking in hours of news every day, anyway. Maybe not continuously but stretched throughout the day.

Beginning with the first “breaking news” (or breakfast news) in the morning with the first coffee or while in the shower, followed by a news ticker on all devices that surround us all day every day, up to the final hours of the day, which are supposed to be for relaxation but which we spend watching, you guessed it, the news. This time in all their gory detail and with all the background stories.

What does that do with us? I can only say what it did with and to me. It inflated problems which are not mine or aren’t problems at all, if you take the time to examine them from a distance.

Keeping your eyes and ears on those news will focus all your senses on things that are awful. And the majority is awful, no doubt. But I get focused on things that I cannot change. Occurrences that are so far out of my reach that I can never hope to do anything about them, with or without my knowledge about them.

So, what does knowing about those news do for and to me?
It makes me sad, it makes me angry and in consequence sick.

Asking for a reason why I – or the people who follow these news – do that seems moot to me. Probably for the reason most people give me, as soon as I say that I don’t watch them any longer: you have to be informed.
Today I reply to those people: why?

What good does it do for me in Germany to know, when there has been yet another shooting in a school in the US? All this does to me, is making me afraid of something happening here. Or just making me afraid.

How does it help me to know, that the economy in Greece is collapsing and that Germany is taking action to intervene. Does knowing that make me sleep any better? Or will my sleep get better by just knowing this and being able to get upset about it? In my experience this is not the case.

Why do I have to take part in every discussion and have an opinion about every topic? There are enough people spreading around their dangerous superficial knowledge, enough so called experts and specialists that gush about those things, without me giving my two cents to everything. And guess what? I have no urge to correct them, either.

How does it help me when I am being shown that people in Gaza are being caged and locked in from all sides and systematically starved? I cannot change that. Neither can I change that, nor does it make me a believer in justice in this world – which is also only watching, by the way.

Why do I have to see and to know in-depth how people all over the world slaughter each other for trivial and idiotic reasons? What does it help me to get told for the hundredth time that there are organisations who abuse children systematically and regularly – and that there are still those, who trust those people with their children, that there are still those people who keep sending their children to those same organisations?

And the gorier, the more detailed all those informations, all those pictures … the better?

It has no purpose for me and my life. It destroys my well being and leads to a sick mind, which keeps expecting the worst.
It leads to us judging people by the actions of other people – because that is what our minds do, because we draw conclusions.
I know all these terrible things anyway and I can’t change anything about them. I don’t need to be reminded of all those dreadful things. Thanks, but no thanks!
But I can change my attitude towards those influences and towards those, who make a profit from selling this daily hate.

I unmask and expose them for what they are.
I stop listening to their screaming and what they try to achieve – the spreading of hate and prejudice by pointing fingers and name calling.

No assassination victim has ever returned to the living by calling out the assassins motivations. Those motivations are of interest to the doctors who treat those damaged minds but proclaiming these motivations creates rifts between people and generates fear.

I stay away from those who keep preaching how bad I’m supposed to feel, just because we as a society help those who are in desperate need of help. I hope I will never have to flee.
I stay away from those who keep spreading envy and malevolence and disguise it as “information”.
I stay away from those who make a profit from showing the worst in people.

You should try it some time.