The Weight Of It All
And how to shed it
Editor’s Note: Have a silly question that wouldn’t have needed asked five years ago before the mass delusion set in, like “how do you define the word ‘woman’?” Ask your mom, since there’s about a 150 percent chance that she is one. Send less obvious questions to askmattlabash@gmail.com
Dear Matt,
I consume a lot of news. I can’t tell if it’s the relentless awfulness of it, or my own brain’s response to it, but it’s heavy. How do I shed the weight of it all?
Jenna G.
This is a recurring problem, and small wonder why, considering that when we aren’t creating havoc of our own, we now spend a good half of our lives in front of screens playing voyeur to all the world’s misfortunes, along with all the bad actors who seem to have a vested interest in perpetuating them - a cast of thousands that’s growing by the day. There is a simple remedy for what’s ailing you: consume less of it. If you don’t want to smell the trash, quit hanging out at the dump.
They don’t pay me, however, to make things that simple, and then leave them there. Gotta bake the word-loaf, so people’s bellies feel full…….And since I have to write on the news on occasion, this is not to encourage you to cancel your Slack Tide subscription so you can use the recovered discretionary income to buy more whiskey or CBD gummies or whatever planes the hard edges off of your world. Let’s not do anything rash. Besides, you can’t re-drink that bottle of Wild Turkey once it’s gone. But you can re-read these columns, or at least look at the pretty pictures and/or listen to the music if reading isn’t your bag.
Many years ago, when I still had to prove I was a tough guy during every writing at-bat, as people with soft hands who type for a living often feel compelled to do (I’ve cut that back to one out of every three or four pieces, on account of marginal character improvement), I made fun of someone who I regret making fun of now. Let me tell you why.