Out of focus....

I had an extremely eye opening experience at the mechanic shop last week. I was there to have my oil changed and was planning on a rather quick visit. But it turned out there were several people ahead of me (at 7:35am go figure). So I had just under a 2hr wait. No big deal they have coffee and a fairly comfortable waiting area. So I took a seat with about five other people in the waiting area. I had every intention of using this time to read, but I was unable to concentrate.They had the news, both local and national playing on the tv's and rather loudly. I looked around me and everyone was just glued to the tv. I decided to go into observation mode.

I discovered two disturbing trends. The first was that in a nearly two hour period of time neither the local news, nor the national news had a single positive story! Even I was starting to feel hopeless by the end of my time in that waiting room. But worse I noticed the people around me. The more the news talked about shootings, murder/suicides, hate crimes, devastation and tragedy after tragedy, the more people paid attention. Not paying attention in a positive way to bring change, no, I literally watched the very countenance of the people change as they became consumed with these hopeless stories of death. I watched and listened to report after report of negativity and tragedy. Both the local and national news were reporting these. Not because there is no good news to report (because there actually is) but because it's what sells, it's what gets them ratings. That means that I endured nearly two full hours of hopelessness because it's what the people want to see???

Think hard about that.... The people complain about these tragedies but are drawn to days of coverage of a mass shooting, an unsolved robbery or homicide, a tragic murder suicide, the number one genre right now is horror and were living it in real life! The public eats up any tiny bit of of tragedy or hysteria to remind them that they are still alive, and just enough adrenaline to scare them into thinking that it might not be for too long, so they function from one news story to the next. There is good happening, beauty happening all around us everyday, but most of us have forgotten how to even look for it.

Instead of actually living our lives in the real world we are content to have our world view spoon fed to us by the media, the internet, our phones and tablets and gaming systems. None of these things are bad unless you become so consumed by them you don't look up long enough to live in the real world anymore. It's not about politics, or religion, or race, or sexual preference. It's about unplugging from the digital world and walking out into the real world and finding things out for yourself. The virtual world is a pale, pathetic and short sided version of the real deal. Don't live in a black and white world of spoon fed facts and systems when there is a gorgeous and amazing world full of color just waiting for you to look up long enough to explore it.

robberty