I choose my peace of mind

It's no secret that it's becoming easier and easier to stay connected and know what's happening in the world. As positive as this may be, there are disadvantages to knowing so much, without filters, without classification, without limits. Because the news that reaches us is not like waves that come and go and wet our feet, but like a tsunami that drags us into cold and terrible depths from which it is very difficult to escape.

In Venezuela, the country where I live, news is generated every second. Our political, social, and economic situation lends itself to rumors spreading like wildfire, robbing us of sleep and giving us nightmares. That is why, for years now, I have chosen not to watch national and international news programs or read national news pages, as a form of escape, as a form of preservation, of survival in the face of so much (mis)information.

It has been said time and time again that the information overload we experience today is harmful to our mental health. Trying to distance ourselves from the world's problems, not having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them, is not a lack of empathy: it is protecting our peace of mind. The oversaturation of bad news fills us with anxiety, nervousness, distress, loss of appetite, and insomnia. What's more, people become paranoid when they are saturated with information; not only do they believe everything they see or read, but they experience it so vividly that they make the unreal real. Humanly speaking, no psyche can withstand such a bombardment of catastrophic news.

In my daily life, I have a schedule for checking social media. I also try not to make it the first thing I see when I wake up or the last thing I see before I go to sleep. I also know that some sources or pages promote alarmism, so I ignore them. These sources are sometimes even people, and I simply don't look at their WhatsApp statuses or Facebook posts, or I block them if I want to stay calm. In other words, I set the limits myself. I don't just set them for myself, but also for others. So when someone comes to “tell” me news that could undermine my stability, I simply tell them that I'm not interested in knowing.

Being connected to social media 24 hours a day disconnects us from the real world, from our surroundings, and from ourselves. Personally, I don't mind when people ask me what cloud I live in because I'm not aware of anything. I repeat, it's not a lack of empathy, irresponsibility, or immaturity. It's protection. I prefer to be in Narnia taking pictures of flowers...

The images are from my personal gallery and the text was translated with Deepl

Thank you for reading and commenting. Until a future reading, friends