I am absolutely in love with the very recently coined phrase ‘fake news’.
It’s just stunningly perfect and incomprehensibly, brings so much joy to my life.
If you ever mind yourself stuck in a conversation you can’t get out of, just take a deep dramatic pause and gently exclaim that in the final analysis, all of this is nothing more than fake news.
Fake.
News.
News is identified as information that is newly received or somehow noteworthy, especially if it concerns recent or important events.
Fake simply means that the news is counterfeit. It is not genuine. It is false.
But if that is the case, what are we left with?
Aren’t all stories selected by a biased editor?
Don’t we read some newspapers, precisely because they lean to the left, and some because they lean to the right? Don’t we read them because we want to remain the same?
I don’t read newspapers or watch CNN anymore. Not because I stopped caring for our planet, and my neighbour, but because it has made me feel like I am a child in an abusive relationship. There is so much yelling from both sides, that it is too much for a sensitive child to handle. Too much before they shut down, and tune out.
I have shut down.
I am still connected.
I visit the odd newspaper occasionally, to follow up on an interest story here and there, but for the most part, I have grown up. I have moved out of the house. I am on my own, away from the chaos and the screaming.
It’s all bitching and complaining, on most occasions.
Sometimes it’s more than bitching and complaining, and it becomes bitching and complaining about bitching and complaining. A seductive and infinite circle.
Where is the good in humanity to be found? Where are the stories that inspire human kindness? Where is the human dignity? The human spirit? Where is the essence that makes us love one another and embrace peace and prosperity?
Most importantly, why do we adopt fake news as the guiding principle in our own life?
We gather to gossip and shove rusty knives into each other’s backs. We look down at our feet when we walk. We waste time. We groan and moan. We make eye contact with one another on occasion, but with a suspicious mind. We are polite to a fault, and corrupt to the core.
You have become exactly who you told yourself you would be.
You repeat over and over, the life imagined is good enough for you to live.
But it doesn’t have to be like that.
If you see misery and pain, you’ll behold more of it. If you embrace failure and disappointment, you will never let go. You will live your life, experiencing more of the same. Unless you change.
Why shouldn’t you? If you don’t take stock of the good news stories of your life, how are you ever going to become them and live them out.
Being positive is important. Not because the young lady at the drive through window would really appreciate an attitude adjustment as she serves you a coffee this morning, but because there is nothing worse than wasted talent.
There is nothing sadder than living an unfulfilled and unhappy life.
So, ignore the fake news. Ignore the real news too.
Ignore the terrible things people say about you.
Ignore the terrible things you say about yourself.
Stop gossiping about other people.
Look for the good. Be kind.
Look for the appearance of the human spirit that connects all of us. See it. Hear it. Point it out when you do, and celebrate it as often as you can.
Try to look for human dignity in the forgotten ones, the abandoned, and the loathsome.
It’s not easy.
But bring people the news.
Bring them good news.
