No News is Good News, Right?

(Photo credit: NS Newsflash)

I’m thinking of going on a news fast.

Some of the stuff that passes as newsworthy boggles my tired brain. And some of the other stuff hurts my heart. And even more of it sends my blood pressure off the charts. Surely my health would improve without CNN, ABC, CNBC, Reuters, AP, NPR, Fox and every other related acronym out there.

I know, I know, I can hear it now. “You need to be informed.” “You can’t bury your head in the sand.” “Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.” And on and on and  on.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it really make a sound?

I’d like to find out.

Like the world is going to stop because I stop watching or reading about it in shocked, jaw-dropping disbelief. Ha.

Hardly.

But maybe I can purge my heart and soul and mind a little of all those toxins.

I know people who have sworn off gluten even though they aren’t allergic to it. I know people who’ve gone cold turkey off sugar and survived and thrived. I know people who won’t eat anything processed, which is  difficult to do, and they are well and happy. I even know people who abstain completely from alcohol and they’re surprisingly a load of fun to hang out with. Amazingly, there are people who eschew caffeine in all its various forms and they get through life quite well, and they sleep fairly well too.

If all those people can eliminate entire food groups surely I can get by without an onslaught of news in my daily life.

Macro photograph of a pile of sugar. Looks dangerous and unhealthy, no? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Certainly fasting from the news will challenge me.  It’s paraded at you in multiple ways. News crawlers inch across your screen as you’re trying to read a scholarly article. Flashy “news” about the latest shenanigans of some rock star jump out in three-dimensional horror as I catch up with my friends and family online. The car radio blares headlines of ridiculousness and horror at the end of a perky tune. The newspaper lands on the driveway and practically screams “read me, read me!” FB status updates copy and paste news and nastiness in the world at an alarming rate.

I want to live in a dugout in the side of a creek bed  a la Laura Ingalls Wilder for a few weeks, figure out the weather report by looking at the sky and noticing the caterpillars, find out what’s happening by chatting with the “neighbor” from twenty miles away. I want my world to shrink down to something manageable and easy and simple.

Not possible, I suppose.

I’ll probably go into withdrawals. Or something I can’t ignore will happen somewhere (please no) and I’ll have to check in. Orfor whatever reason I just won’t be able to stop myself from finding out what’s happening out there in the world at large or nearby.

But I can try for a week or two to avoid most of it, can’t I?

Yes, I can try.

What can it hurt?

We’ll see how it goes.