Throwing Wine is Not the Answer!

When I worked at a private academy full of kids from wealthy families, I mentioned that I didn’t have cable TV. I had to explain that it was because��cable TV cost money, and I didn’t really have that. A small riot of indignation erupted, and I had to squash their plans for a benefit 5K for��me, which is how problems are solved in that type of community. (Later that day, before I pulled out of the parking lot, I scooted underneath the hood of my ’96 Accord��and punched the plastic cover until it went back into place before wishing I’d graciously accepted the offer of a benefit run for me so that I could have��a car that was younger than at least one of my students.)

The unexpected consequence of not having cable TV was that I had some iota of control over what information seeped into my brain, or in the case of cable news stations, what information bitch slapped me and asked me where its money was.

The other day, the Internet taught me what entropy is. I thought that was a pretty cool thing for the Internet to do. I found the Internet useful. Today, I clicked on a Huff Po article about an Amber Alert for four kids, and the following news stories were then suggested for me:

Teen Gouged Out Girl’s Eye Before Killing Her

Security Camera Captured Last Glimpse of Teen Before She Was Burned Alive

Drunk Lawyer’s Mentally Handicapped Client to be Executed

Police Hunt for Man, Son After Mom Found in Fridge

Julia Roberts Like You’ve Never Seen Her Before

I’m not sure which one I find more upsetting, but basically the Internet was saying, “Oh, you like Amber Alerts, you sicko? Then you’re gonna love this other upsetting stuff, you sociopath.” Why did the Internet do that to me? Because that’s how the Internet was raised. “You want to know about something? Clearly you want to read only about that thing for the next ten days until you think that thing is all there is in the world.” It’s easy to get lost down these rabbit holes (I learned a bunch of cool things about Ancient Greece and the Old Testament from just such Wikipedia rabbit holes when I edited erotic romance), so don’t feel bad if it happens to you.

Not only does this happen because the Internet is set up to connect one like story to another to reach a target audience, but also because there are people who generate those stories and those headlines and who benefit from my new fear of being burned alive and probably stuffed in a fridge by those I trust the most. If I told you that a person��just like you��had her eyes gouged out by someone she trusted��just like you trust someone,��and then I told��you that there might be a way to avoid it, but you had to continue reading my blogs for the next ten years to figure out the pattern (which I would create myself by handpicking eye-gouging stories for you to use to connect the dots), I would probably create a strong readership.

** Teacher Tip!** End a class by telling��your students the story of��a woman who was beaten to death in a Walmart for ending a sentence with a preposition, then tell them that if they do their homework, you’ll begin the next class by explaining how to avoid ending sentences with a preposition. Watch the homework roll in!

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that if something you’re reading from a news or “news” or “””””news”””” source is making you feel afraid, it behooves you to train your brain to see that as a red flag.��Gentleman, it’s similar to if a girl you’d like to date tells you she’s really into horses. Ladies, it’s similar to if a guy tells you he’s really into��MMA.��Learning to identify red flags is an important survival skill.

If this doesn’t look like a big, waving red flag to you, you deserve the pain that will follow.

So what should you do if a news story makes you fearful? Should you throw wine in its face? Maybe not right away (but wouldn’t that feel amazing?). There are some things in this world that are scary, so just because the news has covered one doesn’t mean it’s wine throwing time. What you might consider doing after you’ve acknowledged your fear is to ask yourself, “Does��knowing this change my life?” Then be sure you ask yourself, “Should��knowing this change my life?” I’d wager your answer might be yes to the first (depending on the depravity of the story), and no to the second.

Now follow me into a dark place. I used to have a friend who lived approximately 1,500 miles away from me, and he somehow got it in his head to kill himself. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. But I would get these weeknight texts from him just as I was falling to sleep about how he’d had a bad day and was thinking about killing himself. At first I was fearful, then eventually I became callous as all hell, just short of asking him to at least��live-Tweet it for posterity (#nothingicandotohelpyou). What exactly did he expect me to do from all the way across the country? He had confidants within a closer radius than me. What was I expected to do? What��could I do?��I didn’t know his address, I didn’t know anyone up there who knew him, I was basically helpless and that made me want to throw wine in Life’s face.

So now, if you’ve been paying close attention, I’ve set up a few premises:

The news and Internet are a bombardment of hand-picked horrible things (except entropy, which is pretty cool).
The only way to control the horrible things you are exposed to is to make a conscious effort to avoid them or be too��poor for cable or Internet.
When horrible things are happening on the other side of the country, there’s nothing you can really do, and that makes you want to throw wine (but don’t waste wine!) or��watch something burn like it’s wearing a fake hair wig too close to an open flame on Halloween.

But because I know that people basically just think of life in terms of the hashtags nowadays, here’s the premises in a more palatable form:

#horriblestories #yesallnews��#entropy4lyfe
#NoIn7ern3t #momoneymoproblems
#nothingicandotohelp #allwinematters

So here’s the “therefore.” If you feel like the world is a scary place and that it’s getting worse by the day and that everything is going to hell around you, try turning off the TV and getting off the HuffPos and Drudge Reports of the world, taking a deep breath and looking around you. You know what I see when I do that? A couple dogs who have been lying on the bed for an hour with their eyes glued to me to see if maybe I notice they’re there and take them out because they have to pee really badly, some dirty laundry that I’ve been putting off, a fiance who’s exhausted from work, and dammit, the kitchen is a wreck. You know what I don’t see? Police officers with their nightsticks out, ready to inflict pain upon me for no reason��(which��reminds me of this one romance scene I edited…), scary black men putting their wives in fridges, scary white men putting their wives in fridges, and Julia Roberts as I’ve never seen her before. And if I leave my apartment and venture into the surrounding area, sometimes I see stray dogs wandering in dangerous parking lots or a piece of trash that should be recycled, or even a kid who looks like he’s having a rough day and could use someone to talk to. Those are all things I can do something about, and actually do something about,��so they don’t leave me feeling like throwing wine in anyone’s face; they just leave me feeling like I’ve earned��a glass of wine for a job well done.

So the next time you feel that the��news from the whole wide world is��being slung at you like a monkey slings poo, and you feel so angry and impotent all at once (pretty sure Angry and Impotent was a book��I… never mind. Sorry, Mom.) back up and ask yourself the most important question that has ever been asked in the history of mankind:

“Why?”

Why are you seeing those stories?��I believe��I know the answer, but I’ll let you critically think out this one. What does your anger lead to? Who does that anger benefit? I’ll give you the answer to this one:��the anger is��not��for your personal benefit, or even the benefit of those whom the stories represent as victims.

I leave you with this thought, which this was all sort of building toward and you should have known was coming. Police have had conflict with young black men for years and years, this is nothing new. If media outlets��had wanted to before now, they could have hand picked and highlighted��stories of young black men committing petty crime that resulted in an altercation with a cop who pulled��the trigger. But no one really did. Until now. Why now? Who benefits from your rage as you see these stories coming in from across��the country like a suicidal friend texting you at 11pm every Thursday when you can do nothing about it? Where does that rage go? Where does it focus, and what nearby problems do you overlook because your focus has been stirred and manipulated to an issue you cannot��properly address? It’s the typical “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” syndrome. Once you’re mad enough,��helpless enough, all someone has to do is provide a narrative outlet and then you’re too busy protesting something that happened 3,000 miles away to take your dog for walks or do anything else that actually helps others.

We’re just people, unfortunately. Even Julia Roberts. But if we each focused on a smaller radius, everything would still be taken care of, and we could effect real positive change.

You know, Change We Can Believe In��Change In Which We Can Believe