Dealing With Information Overload
Your brain is hardwired to notice problems. Your brain notices problems all over the place… in your life, in your family, in your community, in your country, in yourself, and the emotions can’t handle all the negative information overload. It’s one big problem, and fifty sub-categories of problems within that problem that you’re worried about. It’s like a dandelion with a single stem, but hundreds of tiny seedlings in the puff ball that blows to pieces in the wind.
Naturally, your spirit becomes despondent and anxious. Through media you don’t only know about local problems— you are connected daily to the sadness and plight of people all over the globe. Naturally as empathic creatures, we turn to entertainment for relief.
However, medicating inner emptiness through entertainment and information overload only perpetuates the cycle of inner emptiness.
We also turn to entertainment and “information” to get overloaded because we are afraid of facing ourselves in silence, and feel the old familiar vibes of inadequacy.
There is just no ultimate direction or sense of community in the secular world to “find” ourselves in. The closest thing the world is offering to help you find meaning in your suffering is an apparent escape from suffering. This is why the entertainment industry is no longer just something you buy… it’s free on every social media device, because it’s in that much demand. Entertainment is seeking to alleviate suffering. But it only buries it.
I think that’s why the vaccine at its heart, is being pushed so heavily. Sure there are a lot of health and political reasons that I won’t go into. But the push for the vaccine is the world’s attempt to act like there’s a clear and easy human solution and way out of the inevitably of suffering and sickness. It doesn’t matter if people still test positive after getting vaxed or not— this is the solution we can concretely provide as humans, this is what is in our power.
It’s marketed as a thing to get us back to life, back to “normal.” But we are the choosers of what is normal, and how we choose to act out of fear or love on a consistent basis becomes our “normal;” becomes our status quo.
The fears we have of not actually having a solution to prevent suffering and death, of not being in control of one’s life, of not being able to overcome this sense of inadequacy alone is ultimately is harder to face than a solution that may perhaps fail. (By the way I LOVE this blog post by Emily Stimpson Chapman on this subject if you want more reading).
Facing our powerlessness eventually brings empowerment. This is exactly what my book that came out last year is about (Remembering How to be Human). Our ideas of what we think control is supposed to look like gets inflated, while we let go of the one thing we should take charge of— our personal healing.
Really, to get to a place of optimal mental/emotional/spiritual health despite our circumstances, we’ve got to rebuild the vision of what it means to be a human person, and what it means to have worth, so that we can actually feel our worth, subjectively as individuals. Then we’ll know what we’re on this earth for, and how to deal with fears when they are so overwhelming that they drive us to inaction. I say this even to Christians, because the attack on life’s meaning and purpose is so intense, we need this message as much as atheists do. We need to put God back into every aspect of our thoughts and emotions.
I want to see the great beauty and truth of the Catholic faith coming to answer these places of human need.
Fear is conquered by faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith is spiritual. You can have faith, but still have to work on building up your mental, emotional (and physical) health. Christ must touch and heal all parts of you for your spiritual faith to actually affect the rest of you. You can do many things to dispose yourself for this whole-person healing. This week I’m going to focus on providing some of those concrete exercises.
A final thought before going into the exercises. The famous writer G.K. Chesterton once won a writing contest by submitting to a periodical’s question, “What’s wrong with the world?” He wrote, “I am.”
If you want to see a brighter future for yourself, your kids and your grandkids, you have to stop looking at the destruction “out there.” There’s too much out there for you or I to possibly ever conquer alone. Please, do look at the problems going on inside of you. If we focus on healing the “I,” the world will get better. Our perspective must change.
Individual healing has the power to enact massive worldwide change. It’s not “just” about spiritual conversion, although that’s a big component. It’s also necessary to pursue mental and emotional healing from wounds. The way Christ works is to heal one person who seeks it at a time. Then there is no more despair or pointing to blame this or that person or power for the evils around us. If you admit your own brokenness and have a desire to be better, you’ve got a beautiful purity of heart. Purity of heart is powerful!
Here are your growth exercises for the week for expanding this purity of heart
Meditate and reflect: I am not big enough to handle all the problems of this world. I cannot even change the fundamental circumstances of where I am placed. If I try to handle them alone, I will only become cynical, sarcastic and possibly depressed.
For Personal Reflection: Do you fill yourself with the news, or with empty shows? Do I mostly take things in passively or do I create and contribute? What do you allow yourself to take in a daily basis? On a monthly basis? Are you always taking something in (auditory, visually, etc.)? A creative person must sit in silence to create. Creating a haven of peace within yourself also involves a decently reasonable amount of silence too. I get in my time when I can’t squeeze it in otherwise while driving.
What beautiful thing can I create this week?
2. From Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
This is good advice even to someone who isn’t Christian, because it’s common sense. This is really where mental and spiritual habits start to overlap.
Go for a walk this week and tune out of all stimulation; in fact ditch your phone altogether. The only question I want you to ask yourself during the whole walk (repeat it to yourself over and over if you have to because you might get distracted and think of other things), What do I want to become before I die?
Really be honest with yourself and try to narrow your focus to hear what your heart is saying. If you’ve been in the habit of taking in stimulation all day, you might be evading this question, so be patient and compassionate with yourself as you begin to hear the answer. It may be hard to think about. But it’s worth it. It’s a very crucial element to understanding next week’s topic.