"Turn your head away from the screen / Oh, people, it will tell you nothing more"

-- Jeff Buckley "Sky Is a Landfill"

One looks at all the bizarre stuff going on --- from the doings of Islamic extremism to seriously odd weather patterns to the rising rate of everyday stress with which everyone is burdening themselves --- and it leads to so many questions. How did we get here? How can we alleviate this mass hysteria... this mass anger? To borrow from "The Pilgrim's Progress"... How shall we save our souls?

I have become a strong proponent of giving our video screens a break. Don't leave them on all day just to produce background noise, mindless entertainment, and to "be connected" in the most unconnected way ever conceived.

It goes counter to someone who went to J-school, but we need to get away from the news a little. I don't suppose there's anything wrong with watching the evening news and reading the amassed headlines on Google News, but I find that taking a break from all of these stories of hate, death and malfeasance can help a mindset. Looking into the screens too much can lead to what plagued Denethor in Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" --- a leader who ages rapidly and gets more depressed and eventually self-destructive as he looks into the palantír stone that told of the Enemy's power (a biased perspective of that power, it turns out, shown deliberately to produce these effects on viewers). The more Denethor looked into the stone, the more hopeless he got, the more determined he was that nothing could be done to avoid the destruction that seemed to be everywhere. Likewise, we look at our screens and it colors our world with all of the bad happenings of the day, natural and man-made. It's no wonder of the stereotypical newsman who drinks himself into oblivion --- it borrows from real life where people forced to read a steady stream of woe develop arm's-length/second-hand post-traumatic stress disorder.

It's important to not get sucked into the belief that all that is happening in the world is tragedy and negativity. It's important to turn off our screens and be reminded of everyday human interaction, and that we each have the power to do our small bit of good works... if we but try!