No News is Good News

It was 6 years ago today the Twin Towers went down. I remember it well. It was the month I decided to stop getting the newspaper and watching the news everyday.
You see I was glued to the tv those days in September. The first time I watched those planes fly into the buildings I recoiled in horror. By the time CNN and their competition had the theme song all worked out, I had seen the image about 300 times and was quite " yawn" about the whole image. I had watched the planes fly into the buildings and I watched the people leap to their deaths so many times that I wasn't affected by the image! I started thinking about what was happening to me. I really looked at the newspaper I was recieving everyday and noticed nothing but bad news!
Claire was in kindergarten then and eager to read. Did I want her looking at a newspaper in her thirst for the printed word?? NO WAY!!! Nothing but horrible images, horrible stories of our world gone bad.
I believe everything you read and see affects your day to day life. I can't imagine starting my day with the news or the newspaper. Or going to bed right after watching the news. Why? So I can feel angry, sad, depressed, anxious a soon as I start my day or right before I fall asleep? No Way!
I may not be right up to speed on what's happening in the world today but I know enough to have an intellegent conversation at a dinner party.
I was in the States last year for a week. Five years after 9/11. I was so shocked at the media there. I was in the airport in Chicago waiting for a connecting flight. There were tv's everywhere broadcasting a plane that had to evacuate due to some percieved " threat". That was comforting.
I arrived at my hotel in Dallas and armed with my cozy pj's, and a chocolate bar I hunkered down for some good tv. Nothing but news. Every channel had news and they were talking about what " terror alert" the country was on. Orange, yellow.......
red and yellow and pink and green....
purple and orange and blue.....
I can see a terrorist,
see a terrorist,
see a terrorist threat too.
I was ready to get dressed and sleep with my running shoes on..in case I had to ....uh.....run somewhere in the middle of the night? ...geesh! What does knowing that the country's on a red alert do but freak everyone out!! There's nothing the common folk can do except worry!!! Thankfully I found a Friends rerun, ate my chocolate bar and broke a tooth. Great! I forgot to check my health coverage before I left. Now I couldn't sleep. It wasn't...." was that a plane flying low?" It was " was that my tooth aching?".
So I don't get the newspaper anymore and my kids aren't exposed to all the negativity out there. I remember being in Claire's class last year. They had a current events board up with newspaper clippings kids had brought in. All of the clippings were of soldiers killed in Iraq, global warming, hurricanes, tsunami's....there was not one clipping of a hero, a good deed, or a funny story. Sad.
Does the public really want to hear all this negativity? Do we just blindly buy the newspapers and watch news shows really thinking that this is all that is newsworthy? Not me. I try to watch a comedy before I go to sleep and while we drive to school in the morning the kids and I listen to music.
My cholesterol is low, my blood pressure is low and I'm generally in a good positive mood.