Every day, there is another jarring headline about the economy, war, immigration, loss of funding for essential services, corruption, racism, desecration of historic sites, catastrophic weather events, political divisiveness, shocking Supreme Court decisions, threats to election integrity, disease outbreaks, and AI’s threats to humanity. Every day, we are blasted with news that drops our jaws. Every day, we think it can’t get worse, but then it does.
I find myself going through these days in various states of shock, anger, denial, and apathy. I think it’s important for us all to be informed citizens and take seriously our right to participate in our government. But lately, I am wondering if the price of participation is fatigue to the point of feeling numb.
Being informed means reading or watching the news or listening to podcasts, or all three. I glance at the headlines and read Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter as I drink my early morning coffee. Then I listen to NYT The Daily on my way to work. While exercising, running errands, or doing laundry, I listen to Aaron Parnas, Strict Scrutiny, Pod Save America, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, Runaway Country, Throughline, The Ezra Klein Show, The Best People with Nicole Wallace, The Economist, Radio Atlantic, Assembly Required, and Straight White American Jesus. I subscribe to The New York Times and The Atlantic. I glance at CNN and sometimes Fox News just to see what they are saying about the same topics.
Even then, not a day goes by that my husband or a friend doesn’t say, “Did you hear about XXX?!?” and I am shocked again by a bizarre headline that, despite my voracious appetite for information, I have somehow missed. It’s utterly exhausting.
But consuming the news is only half of it. It’s what the news does to my soul that brings me to a state of sadness and feeling incapable of effecting change, which leads me to the debilitating feeling of numbness. As I process the news, I see the callous behavior of politicians and too many regular Americans, which directly leads to discrimination, suffering, and even senseless loss of life. I am flabbergasted by the cruelty. And I cannot understand how anyone could not be as hurt and angered as I am; how anyone could either promote or stand back in complicity with the carnage. I am stunned. Then I am numb.
They say that action is an antidote to apathy. So, I have volunteered with my local Democratic party; I have gone to protests and participated in political phone banking and written postcards until my fingers were cramping. I have donated to causes I believe in and called and emailed my elected officials dozens of times to express my sadness over their actions (or all too often their inactions). Nonetheless, it’s easy to feel like all of those things are just a tiny drop in the vast ocean of outrage.
It is in times like these that I am reminded of a quote I have held dearly since I was a teenager: “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world for one person.” In the tiny acts of kindness and love that I can muster up for one single person, I can start to melt the icy edges for both me and someone else.
The news won’t stop. Politicians won’t suddenly become angels. There will always be wars. We won’t wake up to a miraculously perfect world tomorrow. But I don’t want to stay numb. So the onus is on me to cut apathy with action, which is more likely to look like a microscopic act of kindness than a heroic, earth-shattering declaration. We can’t boil the ocean, but we can throw a life preserver to someone who is drowning in the waves.
Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.
