Information Overload?

So shit's bad right now. The economy is in the toilet, our finest men and women are battling it out in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weather is just fucking weird, the left hates the right, the right hates the left, neither side can seem to agree with the other, people in general seem to be more discontent than ever, it's just all fucked, right? Every single last piece of news that seems to come out of any the mouth of any source is bad. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, local news, everything. Everything everywhere is fucking completely terrible, right? I mean, take a look at this picture. Look at those headlines...NYC is apparently being overrun by people with herpes...Gas prices have doubled in the last year...Israel wants to kick the shit out of Iran...Indiana has been raped by weather...NYC has basically become an oven...Tomatoes are apparently toxic now...Amazon.com is broken...Oil prices are causing all sorts of problems...Japan has been attacked by a crazy man with a knife...and those are only about half the headlines on Drudge right now. Aside from one single headline proclaiming that the threat of an AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals being over, it's all bad news.

It's all bad news...that was my mindset about 3 months ago. I was in a hole. My mind was broken. All I could think about was bad news. As I drove home one day, I realized that yes, there's a lot of bad shit in the world, but really, does it affect so much that I should let it drag me down? In the grand scheme of things, were things really that fucked up? So I went through the headlines in my mind. Aside from the mortgage mess/shit economy affecting my monthly income, none of the other stuff mattered that much. I realized that I was overloading myself with bad thoughts. I was overloading my brain with negative headlines. And what purpose did it serve? None. All the information that I was feeding myself did just one thing...it left me wanting to read more, and more, and more. Like the snowball effect.

Now I'm not saying that all the shit news isn't true. It is. But for those like me who are fortunate enough to have a roof over our heads, a decent job, food on the table, a family and/or significant other who loves us, friends who love us, and all the general necessities in life, things really aren't that bad. And the best part...that which ebbs must flow. Life comes in waves. It can't be all good, all the time. If it was, it wouldn't be life. Just as things have gotten worse, things will get better. The economy will fix itself. The wars we're engaged in will end. The weather, though abnormal, will remain tolerable. Tomatoes will be safe. Amazon.com will be fixed. Knived assailants in Japan will be dealt with. Oh, and if you think about it, herpes really isn't that bad. You get a few sores on your lips. You'll look like a deformed imp for a while, but they go away.

The point is...enjoy what you've got in your life, even if you don't have much. If you find yourself feeling aggravated, or upset, or sad, or worried, do yourself a favor. Turn of the TV, change the channel, navigate away from whatever news page you're on. Unplug, unwind, and love what you've got. :-)