Today I had news/opinion overload. In the end, I came to this conclusion: We really don't need so many articles or to spend our time on Social Media in order to know what is right and safe for our individual and family needs. And so, imagine that I am standing with a megaphone and speaking very clearly...slowly...to not be misunderstood at all: "FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN" and give yourself a moment to listen to your heart and your mind (but not until after you finish reading this, wink-wink). There, and only there, will you find your inner peace and sense-of-self; that little bit of you that knows just what is right for you and those you love. Your gut, so to speak. You don't need others to tell you who you are...especially others who have no idea who you are....so STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN and give yourself the time and grace to remember where your heart is planted.
When we were all sent home back in March, we relied on our screens to help us stay connected and informed. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a screen person. My home has internet connection but no cable or regular television access. We have only one TV. It sits in our living room until the occasion when it is moved into one of the kids' rooms if, for example, the girls want to have a sob-story-marathon and Max and I don't want to be witnesses to the tears and drama. I've had folks walk in to see the empty TV stand and wonder if I finally went off the deep end and ditched the thing. All that to paint the picture for you of me in March, reading from my screen as much as I could in order to stay connected and informed in our tumultuous world. We all were doing the same thing, becoming a captive audience to an assembly line of information, mostly dire news, telling us what we needed to know in order to survive the pandemic that had taken over our planet.
Fast forward to July, four months later. How are you doing with curating the amount of news available for your perusal? Are you back to discerning what you allow into your brain and keeping out that which will do nothing but breed panic? You see, as a captive audience, we allowed ourselves to become victim to the unending factory-style produced 'news' that our screens are designed to deliver.
This is not good.
This is not healthy.
And it is time to take ownership of the control over what we allow into our minds and into our homes. Imagine, if you will, that the screen did not exist, and the only way for you to get information was to allow the original person who wrote it to come into your home to inform you. Would you allow the fools, the attackers and those with whom you know you will feel only anger and dissent? Perhaps you would invite one, just for frame of reference and to ensure you are open to hearing all sides, but I doubt you would allow the barrage of negative-message-senders that you are inviting onto your devices. It is time to stop allowing ourselves to be subject to information overload. I suggest we need to designate time for information intake. Next we need to designate time to discern and study the information we gathered. Then and only then can we let the information marinate in our minds so that we can think for ourselves. You have a mind that just might have answers we all need, but it can only get to the point of lucid thinking when you allow it to stop being attacked by the ridiculous amount of information provided by your screen.
And so, one final time, I implore you...PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN...you'll be surprised at what you will find when you give your mind and heart the freedom to be yours again.
