50. headlines

Today had me thinking about headlines. 

The day started off like most other Mondays: we woke up, made some matcha, packed the kids lunches for school, fed them breakfast, badgered them to get dressed - put socks on - put shoes on - brush teeth, and scooted them out the door at 8:45am. 

I tidied up the house before our cleaner arrived (I know I’m not the only one), talked to an early bird friend on the east coast of the states, then sat down to get some work done. By noon, I was ready to take a break, take a walk with Barney, and take some deep breaths. I needed to get my workout in, but wanted some fresh air first. 

So I leashed up Barney and walked up the hill by our house, feeling pretty good about the start to my day, and as I walked, my thumb did its thing and found its way to unlock my phone, open my email, and start scrolling. 

Just like that, they got me. 

WORLD PREPARES FOR LOOMING TRADE WAR.

Boop. Just like that, a lil trigger. A little fear. A dash of anxiety. A tiny catch of breath. A skip in my heart rate. 

I’ve been off the sauce - I mean, the news - for the most part since leaving social media. I consume it in small, intentional quantities, which means once a week I spend about 20 minutes going to varied media sources (Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, NPR), then fill in the gaps by reading some of the more ‘mainstream’ headlines (BBC, CNN, AP News)... 

And then I stop, and don’t do it again until the next week. 

But today, like I said, a headline snuck up on me - jumped right out at me from my email, and it got me thinking about how it impacts us to be peppered with headlines, often with little to no warning, through social media, email, and television. 

Though we don’t have regular cable, and even though our television set is usually speaking Portuguese, French, Spanish or German, as soon as I turn on the TV (to do my workout on YouTube) it defaults to a local news channel. 

Without even being fluent in the languages, the energetic signature of news is unmistakable. Fear, anxiety, grief, suffering, and uncertainty project themselves from the screen right into my subtle body. 

This is the thing about headlines: they are designed to activate the nervous system and grab you from whatever else you may be doing by hijacking your perception. What is the most effective way to do that? Duh, you guessed it: fear.

By ‘hooking’ a reader or viewer with a sensational, polarizing, fear-mongering, or anger-provoking headline or sound byte, our fight response kicks in, and we are more likely to consume the content - whether to try to disprove it, learn more about a potential threat, or dismiss it as nonsense. 

Because of this, headlines often resort to sensationalism, reductionism, or oversimplification. What happens when masses of people are consuming ‘news’ by simply scrolling through headlines? I’d wager a guess that we get vast swaths of the population who are emotionally activated, erroneously informed, and desensitized to shock, horror and outrage. As a result, these people may gradually not know what to believe. 

What does it do in our brains when we outsource our story-making?

Before WORLD PREPARES FOR LOOMING TRADE WAR derailed my morning, I was doing pretty okay. Within a span of 30 seconds, I caught myself frantically doing mental math to calculate all the business and family budget adjustments which might need to be made if the USD tanks. 

Boop. (Fear).

All of a sudden, despite being on a walk in an empty field on a sunny winter day, surrounded by wildflowers, I was stressed. And I realized that in that tiny little ‘harmless’ scroll through my email, I’d given my power away to the headline. 

I’d handed over the headliner status in my own life to the New York Times. Because see, the headline in my day at that time might have been something like SHRIMP SALAD SOUNDS GOOD FOR LUNCH. 

Or maybe it would have been CLEAN SHEETS ON BED SMELL NICE. 

Could have gone with BARNEY IS LOOKING VERY FLUFFY TODAY.

Now you might be thinking “Okay, Amelia, but what about the real world? Don’t you think it’s important to know what’s going on and stay abreast of current events?” 

Honestly? Sigh.

Yes, I think it is important to be aware of what is unfolding in the wider world. However, the emphasis on being aware of what’s happening out there often comes at the expense of awareness about what is present right here and right now.

I think it's possible for overconsumption of headlines to dramatically alter the baseline experience a person is having, and that generally the shift is in the direction of fear, stress, anxiety, worry, perceived helplessness rather than towards faith, peace, calm, trust, and a sense of confidence. 

I think we each get to choose how we want to be in relationship with headlines, and in doing so, we decide what - and who - is headlining in our lives. This doesn’t mean burying our heads in the sand, but it does mean maintaining a fierce orientation towards ourselves as the headliner and main character of our experience. It means attuning to the plot and setting that is unfolding around us and participating in writing the story.

Even when we do that, sometimes the headlines are tough. 

DEAR FRIEND LOSES BELOVED CAT TOO SOON, GRIEVES DEEPLY.

YOUNGEST CHILD HAS DIARRHEA & TUMMY ACHE FOR 6TH DAY. 

CITY PETITION REQUIRED TO PREVENT MUDSLIDES IN YARD. 

NEW OFFER MET WITH CRICKETS DURING MARS RX, SAYS CEO. 

Ok, now I’m laughing, because in writing these, I actually feel a bit worn out. As I pulled each of these areas of awareness into my mind - the headlines from my real life - I realized that even just holding these (and of course, the ones too tender to share even here) is a lot. My energy is drained, and I am ready for sleep. 

I guess I’m just suggesting that we practice mindfulness with the headlines, and notice what arises when they boop us unexpectedly. We might give ourselves grace as we realize that we’re sometimes hanging on by our fingernails just to deal with the day to day stuff - it’s no wonder that piling the fear, rage, grief, stress, and things-that-will-maybe-go-terribly-horribly-wrong on top of our personal headlines spins us out and frays our edges. 

As for me, I’m still ruthlessly unsubscribing, I’ll stick to my weekly diet of one headline snack on Fridays, and besides that, I’ll be over here writing and editing my own journalistic endeavor, the Rainbow Moonbeam Daily Reader, where I will find out about all the current events actually happening in my body, mind, relationships, family, and environment. 

So, yeah, okay, WORLD PREPARES FOR LOOMING TRADE WAR. 

But also, TIRED MOM WRITES IMAGINARY NEWSPAPER IN PAJAMAS. 

(Is the mom or the newspaper wearing pajamas? It's a cliffhanger, perhaps we'll never know).

Guess that just goes to show you, good news is happening all the time too.

Yawn. Alright, good night. Let me know what’s in your daily gazette today - I’m here for your headlines, too.