My wife avoids news. At least, she tries that, with varying success. She becomes so unhappy with the flood of disaster reports about climate, rights, Gaza, Ukraine, Trump, Russia, emergency packages and war threats that she inserts breaks for her mental well -being. Simply, just don’t read a newspaper for a week and don’t visit news sites. That helps, although she sometimes has to admit to have followed current events again – a kicking news junk with a relapse.
I am inclined to think that I am hardened. Or immune. Or combined. In any case: that I tolerate the news better and do not need such breathing breaks.
But is that true? I was pretty gloomy lately, and because that happens to me more often, I was looking for the cause in the usual: blunt construction, worked too hard on a book, doubts about its quality, sleeping problems and a gray winter. But I am starting to suspect that I am more comprehensible for international tensions than I thought.
I write this in the Lake District, the National Park an hour north of Liverpool, where I tour with my brother for a few days. There is not necessarily more daylight here – dramatic clouds are devouring the mountain tops and draping a spooky twilight over the lakes and valleys – nor do I have fewer doubts about my work. But by being on the road in nature, I was refurbished. We are in the middle of the aftermath of the collision between Zensky and Trump (“a man without a pack of a suit without a man,” as someone described it), and I get that news, but only in moderation. I am large parts of the day loose from computer and telephone and then have other things to give my attention: mountain passes with rise rates of up to 30 percent, the remains of a Roman fort, picturesque lakes, rugged mountain landscapes, literary history.
For example, we visited the cottage where from 1799 to 1813 the poet William Wordsworth, first with his sister Dorothy, later also with wife Mary and their children. A crowded house, thanks in part to problematic guests such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey, who were heavily addicted to opium. Wordsworth wrote the lion’s share of his most famous work, including ‘Daffodils’ (‘Daffodils’), that starts with the famous sentence: “I wandered lonely as a cloud. ” The cottage is in Grasmere, a hamlet at the lake of the same name. But his true office was the outdoors. During long walks, poems arose that he called ‘spots’ time’. “Here should be my home”wrote Wordsworth, “This Valley Be My World”. Taking endless walks in a corner of the country, that is to avoid news.
Of course, if everyone had such flight behavior, we would not get anywhere. Although … a while ago I heard science journalist Ed Yong say something that struck me in a podcast. Yong did for The Atlantic From the early start intensive report of the Pandemie, work for which he received the Pulitzer prize. But that also attracted a heavy switch. In order not to go under it, he started to bird fanatically in those years, a hobby that he has continued to practice, despite a voice in mind that says that Vogelen is a waste of time in the light of world problems. “People often call birds escapism,” said Yong, “a word with a negative connotation. I had a conversation about this with a friend who said it is more important than ever to go outside, into nature. I agree. We have to refuel. And it is important because, if you care for biodiversity, diversity, the environment and equality, you must be connected to what you are fighting for. Without that solidarity, the work, the struggle, is abstract. “
That places news avoiding in a different light. It can simply be a case of your head in the sand and hope that everything is spreading.
But giving your head peace and space can also make you more resilient and better understand what defending is worth. If that is the case: every now and then especially the news.
Auke Hulst is a writer.