Day 24 - A Day Without Wah Wah

Yesterday, in the midst of the psychotic meltdown, or at least the pretension of a meltdown, in the U.S. economy I decided that the best process for me was ignore the news. Actually, it went deeper than that; yesterday I chose to AVOID the news.

I went so far as to avert my eyes while deleting emails from my standard news sources, The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and well-intentioned and/or sarcastic friends. While checking the mail I tried to avoid viewing subject lines in exchange for paying attention to where the email came from. Mostly, I succeeded, though even with a conscious effort to avoid all the input, I still caught bits and pieces of news from the headlines on newspapers on the street, or the ubiquitous television montiors in public places, and I ended the evening deep in a discussion of the economic bailout.

I noticed two things in this... Firstly, my day was not impoverished by not being instantly and perpetually aware of every little detail being played out by the power brokers in Washington and New York and expounded upon by the media priests and acolytes in New York and Atlanta. If anything, my day was expanded to take in more of the world around me, the thoughts in my mind, the work at hand.

Secondly, instead of eagerly running to find out what I missed, I now find myself digging deeper, looking for more softness, more silence, more peace. I am more keenly aware than usual that the random verbiage and the grand declarations, by all sides of the political conversation, serve mostly to keep the rest of us bound and gagged and impotent. While I am normally and enthusiastically a sucker for political alertness and playful disputation, I am this morning more interested in learning how to use my words, my time, and my life for something of real significance.

At least for right now... I don't need no Wah-Wah.