Skip to content

Mitchell’s Musings: How to deal with a real-time overload

Put the phone away to escape bombardment of negativity
20799236_web1_cellphone-chatting-device-1353350
Put the phones away and try connecting with a human being, columnist Glenn Mitchell says. (file photo)

With all the mayhem descending upon us from, well, above I suppose, there’s only one thing that can take the edge off the anxiety, the worry, the fretting, the thoughts of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hype that’s bombarding us 24-7 in what they call real time—a walk.

I prefer the old days when we heard about stuff in an orderly manner in tomorrow’s daily newspaper delivered to your doorstep in, I guess, fake time.

Nevertheless, a walk is still what the doctor ordered, although this prescription is more practical than medicinal and costs you nothing.

Not only does a walk take you away from your social media devices—leave the phone at home no matter how much you think you have to be attached to the world at any given time to be truly safe. You will soon realize the mountains are still there, the birds are still there, civilization and nature still co-exist to some degree.

The sun may even be shining and it will put the talking heads screaming, “this is important folks, so you better listen to me” in some kind of perspective. Time seems to stand still. Call it unreal time if you like because you don’t know, or care, what time it is. You may even talk to a neighbour and connect with a real person who shares some of your concerns, and that connection alone will help alleviate your fears. We’re not in this alone.

Now, I know the cacophony of sights and sounds on our media devices have a purpose (believe me I partake way too much, being a news junkie), as we’re trying to get the railways running again, keep a virus at bay, monitor a fluctuating stock market and elect a Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in November south of the border.

There’s an adrenaline rush involved as well, an addiction to the latest crisis and its management, or lack thereof. Hey, guilty as charged. If I’m going pee at 3:30 in the morning, I’m often checking my phone to see if the world is still revolving just in case it isn’t. I check it after peeing of course, I don’t want you thinking I have a problem. I also realize that if it isn’t still revolving it could ruin my night’s sleep, but I do it anyway.

Why do I take my phone to bed in the first place? That’s a question my wife is also asking and let’s just say we’re working on a solution, even though the answer seems obvious.

That’s the problem with being connected, it’s well within reach at all times. And we reach, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else and even when we know it’s not good for us.

In the old days, there’s that phrase again, we just kind of trusted our leaders were taking care of things, even if they weren’t, and went about our business, taking care of our own things. We would pay attention at election time, maybe, and at crisis time, and that’s about it. We didn’t need to know what they were thinking every waking moment.

Now we have a world leader who not only tweets a dozen or more times a day with his thoughts, whether they’re coherent, spelled correctly or not, for all the world to see whether we like it or not.

And it’s not exactly inspiring us to think our leaders are taking care of business, conducting themselves in an ethical way, or are capable of guiding us through sunny days let alone any crisis of consequence.

Now, I know we’re all winging it. I’ve written on the topic before but never has it been on full display to such a degree and at such high levels in human history. Likely it has, there’s been crazy kings before after all, but not in this all-encompassing, 24-7, real-time media environment.

So whaddya do?

You throw your hands up, put your phone on the top shelf for an extended period of time, and go for a nice, long walk.

Repeat as often as necessary.

Glenn Mitchell is a columnist and former editor of the Morning Star. You can send fan mail to mitchchap1@outlook.com.

READ MORE: MITCHELL’S MUSINGS: Rebranding Vernon for the new millennium

READ MORE: MITCHELL’S MUSINGS: Leave our currency alone