It's Okay to Look Away.

All day I’ve been thinking about load, the emotional load we carry every day. That emotional load is filled with the everyday stuff — tasks, work, errands to run, that thing we need to return, the piles of laundry, the health of our parents or our ailing dog, the grades our kids get and the struggles they go through at school. That’s everyday load. Then there’s the intermittent load, like the occasional arguments you have with your partner, or financial hiccups in the form of a bill you didn’t expect, or that project at work that goes off the rails. This is the kind of load we’re all expected to carry every day.

But the load we’re asked to carry right now is quite a lot different. The load of always-on media, a constant stream of information from billions of people all over the world, all adding their own voices to the fray, some of them louder and clearer than others but not necessarily more wise or kind.

And now we have the load of the collective fear that has permeated the day, the threat of a megalomaniac threatening to wipe a civilization out.

This load is different.

This load is too much. Not because we shouldn’t have to bear witness to the craziness of the world — we are a product and producer of that craziness. We should have to bear witness to it, to some degree. But it’s a terrible thing to bear witness to something we feel helpless to change.

It has been difficult to think about what it must be like in the place against which that threat is made, knowing that the country that makes it has the power to annihilate them and is driven by someone who might be crazy enough to do so. What must it be like to wonder if it’s safe to leave your house, and if an attack comes, what direction will it come from? What must it be like to see your neighbor standing outside his front lawn, looking up at the sky, worry etched in his face, wondering what is coming? What must it be like to be a parent there, to have your children ask you what is going to happen? To have them ask you if they will die?

It’s entirely possible nothing will happen. As my favorite historian points out, maybe the megalomaniac is in his happy place knowing that all are on tenterhooks, waiting to see if he will make good on his threat to “wipe a civilization out.” Maybe that’s all this is, a bid for attention from someone who knows he’s perceived as losing the war (”open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards”).

It’s okay to look away. Tonight I’ll be having dinner with friends, perhaps with a drink or two. Then I’ll come home and take a shower, and if I look at the news it will be for a moment, in the hopes that nothing happens. But I will not sit and stare at the screen, hoovering up everyone else’s anxiety in the process. There is nothing I can do tonight for the neighbor looking up at the sky. But I can be present for the people in front of me. That has to be enough.

Witness what you can bear to witness. Then put it down.