How much of the world’s news is enough to know, and how much
can I get away with not knowing? As it is, I never feel like I know enough.
Bruce will come in with, “Did you hear…?” And of course I won’t have heard. I
know I’m supposed to read the NY Times and the Daily Beast and countless other publications.
I do listen to NPR a lot because I
can listen and do other things at the same time. Shamefully, though, I don’t
seek out any other news sources. I can’t read and accomplish things at the same
time, plus I hate being on the computer. Mostly I feel like I just can’t spare
the time to keep up with it all when my everyday life is more pressing. And
then there’s the fact that I just want to not
know, even though I know I should
know.
I’m a hypocrite. I berate my students for not knowing
anything that’s going on in the world. Oh, are there wars happening? Oil
spills? Earthquakes? Ships sinking? And yet I too want to shut my eyes and
ears. I want to walk outside under the glittering winter stars and feel
microscopic flakes of snow hit my cheeks. I want to skate and ski and play card
games with Cedar and Bruce. I want to meditate and exercise and cuddle with the
cats. In addition, I need to plan and
teach classes, serve on committees and boards, cook, clean, eat, sleep, etc.
How am I supposed to keep up? Should news be a priority? Is it cheating, even
sinful in some way, to block out the evil, the painful and horrifying?
What if it came here, I think? What if I were that Syrian mother with her child wrapped in her arms?
Wouldn’t I want to know that out there in the world some other mother was
feeling it with me, maybe even trying to help? But it’s the help part that’s
the problem. I don’t see how I can
help. And if I can’t help, then I would rather not know.
I do read our local paper because it is small and manageable
and I can find out which of my students were arrested, whose relatives died or
had babies, and what big things are happening in our small town. I would much
rather focus on the two new hotel projects, controversial as one of them is (because
it will be five stories tall and block people’s view of the lake), than try to
get my mind around all the deaths in the Middle East.
One death is comprehensible. A hundred thousand deaths are
not. Recently an Australian soldier came to our small town, stayed one night in
a hotel (long enough to send an email to his father, bequeathing his personal
possessions) and then climbed a mountain, went to sleep under a blanket out in
the open, and died of hypothermia. On purpose. He had served in Afghanistan,
another place of death that I can’t get my mind around. This soldier came back
from there and felt he needed to die,
so he came here to do it. No one knows why. But his odd story and his handsome
face captured our imaginations. Many local people searched for him in bitter,
below-zero cold. When they found him they treated his body with honor and sent
it back to Australia. Almost every day in the last few weeks I’ve seen his
picture in the paper and cried. Even though I don’t truly understand his
actions, I can get my mind around
him. His story is small enough and close enough to home.
I have heard many times about street people, homeless, who
get change handed to them blindly by people trying not to see them, and who are
so grateful when people do see, when
they are seen as people, even by those
who can’t help. So perhaps we do have to look, even when we can’t do anything.
We have to at least see what is
happening. It isn’t enough, but it is something.
I don’t have television, and I still don’t have time to
read, but I will continue to listen to as much as I can handle. When I hit my
limit, though, I will change the radio station and dance, because if no one is
dancing, then we are wasting the blessing of not being in Syria or Afghanistan, and that doesn’t do anyone any
good.
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