Toward the end of last month’s Price-Poe tour, my UK business partner Peter commented on how lovely everyone we met had been. He said that his partner had been worried about him coming to the US because the news in the UK depicted America as a divided country full of angry people attacking one another.
Our news is no better, of course. It’s beyond challenging to read the headlines, let alone dive into the articles, without feeling anxiety about the future. Doomscrolling, they call it. And that’s just how it feels.
How did we get here?
I grew up watching the nightly news with my parents. We were a CBS family. I witnessed Walter Cronkite report on tough stuff every night — the death count in Vietnam, the violence against the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of public figures — in ways that made me think. But I wasn’t afraid, even though much of what I saw was scary. Instead, the trust I felt in Mr. Cronkite made me ask myself how I felt — and then what I wanted to do about it.
When I was finally old enough to accompany my parents to the White House (they were active in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), Richard Nixon was president. I had made up my ten-year-old mind about President Nixon. I thought he was a “bad man” for everything he was doing in Vietnam. I told my parents I would not shake his hand.
My father said, “You are allowed to have your opinion about Nixon. But whatever you may think, he is the President of the United States, and you will shake his hand.”
I did, and this man whom I had demonized spent two minutes chatting with me. He was lovely. That was confusing as heck! But it also made see that things were not as black and white as they seemed on our black-and-white television. I realized I had a lot to learn.
Charles Collingwood & Vincent Price. Photo courtesy of the Vincent Price Family Legacy.
My dad was dear friends with the legendary Charles Collingwood, one of Murrow’s Boys — young journalists recruited by the great Edward R. Murrow during World War II, who changed the face of news by taking incredible risks to report the truth.
At Collingwood’s funeral, Morley Safer said of his friend and mentor, “It was Murrow and Charles and a few others who made the mere business enterprise of CBS into a proud and vital moving part of the American democracy. They spoke up when others chose the ugly, prudent path of silence. And I pray we have men and women of that stern stuff today, not to honor their memory, but to honor ourselves.”
I’m afraid we have stopped honoring ourselves.
One of my favorite books — a book I refer to almost daily — is The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner (1988). When I read it decades ago, it changed my life. Glassner’s book has only become more relevant — reissued after 9/11 and during the first Trump presidency. Why? Because Glassner explains how unfounded fears have come to make headlines and thus hornswoggle people into ignoring, avoiding, or dismissing the real issues that require our attention.
It’s simple really.
Fear sells, and the news media relies on its advertisers.
I should pause a moment here to say that I first read Glassner’s book because I was trying to learn how to face my fears. I spent so much of my thirties and early forties struggling with anxiety. Then one day, I woke up and realized that fear had become a habit — and that all habits can be broken! Thus began my study of how fear works.
Fear and the news media rely on three simple techniques to refocus our attention on the wrong things: repetition, misdirection, and the depiction of isolated incidents as trends.
Here’s an example:
One night, out of the blue, I can’t sleep. Why? I don’t know. But I don’t like it. At all. The next night, when I close my eyes, the thought comes, “What if I can’t sleep again?” And then, instead of falling asleep as I always have, I begin thinking about why I didn’t fall asleep the night before and not about the thousands of previous nights where I slept like a baby. Then guess what? It’s harder to fall asleep. But eventually, I do. Until the next night, when I remember the previous night’s fears, and suddenly not falling asleep seems much more likely than the simple act of shutting my eyes and drifting off. Pretty quickly, I come to think of myself as someone who has trouble sleeping.
Fact: Studies have shown that human mind Velcros the bad and Teflons the good. Meaning our minds are much more likely to remember what went wrong than right. This is fear’s fertile ground in which to plant its three seeds.
Repetition: I didn’t sleep well last night. What if I don’t sleep well tonight? What if I become someone who can’t sleep well?
Misdirection: Fear, the master magician, gets us to focus on what it wants us to see instead of what is happening. Fear makes me forget that I have always been a sound sleeper and turns my attention to the misery of not sleeping. I think of all the ads for sleep problems, the news stories about not sleeping. I lose sight of the big picture of a life spent sleeping well and obsess about the recent problem.
Depiction of Isolated Incidents as Trends: Now one sleepless night has been framed by fear as a trend I can dread. And so a new habit of fear is formed.
The news industry uses the same technique our minds have already proven highly effective. Instead of reporting on the 100,000 flights that take off and land safely each day — how would that make anyone want to tune in? — they report on the one plane with the blown tire or the irate passenger. They repeat that isolated story with glee the next time a minor incident occurs, focusing on the one plane a month instead of the 3,000,000 safe flights. Before you know it, there is a bona fide trend of anger and shoddy mechanics overtaking the airline industry. We stop thinking about flying as the safest form of transportation, and a whole generation of anxious flyers is born.
So, you may be asking yourself, why am I writing about this in a Daily Practice of JOY blog? Because fear is joy’s greatest nemesis. Fear tells us it is more real, more important, more meaningful, more practical than joy. Joy is optional. Joy is a fluffy feeling, but fear, now that’s something we can take to the bank.
Hah! Fear comes to us for life and we give it the only life it has.
This is precisely where your daily practiec of joy pays the big dividends.
To practice joy every day, we have to acknowledge that fear will try to bend our ears every single day. In the news. In our minds. In daily conversation. Fear will repeat and misdirect and puff itself up. But if we know this, we can call its bluff. We can see what’s happening and flip fear the bird by turning fear’s own techniques on itself.
When I can’t sleep at night, I just repeat the word “Love” over and over again until fear fades and I eventually doze back off. This really works! Sure, it can be hard work to turn off the clamoring lies, but when you stick with Love, Love wins.
When I read something in the news that disturbs me, I counteract it with the larger truth taught to me by none other than Gandalf: “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay”. I think of all the daily acts of good and the fear fades.Then I remain alert. I watch for fear’s misdirection and I keep my eye on what matters: The power of love. The truth that does set us free. And the joy inherent in each and every one of us. I top that all off with gratitude. And before I know it, fear fades and hope returns.
Sound pie in the sky?
I’m not suggesting we live in la-la land. I’m suggesting that once we understand how fear gets in and learn how to create practices to counter its lies, we will clearly see the work that needs to be done all around us.
Fear paralyzes. That’s it whole m.o. Then we do nothing.
So, let’s roll up our sleeves instead of wringing our hands.
Let’s love. Let’s listen for the lies and reject them. Let’s practice joy.
Because. . .
Love wins, when we love.
The truth sets us free when we learn how to hear it.
And even in the darkest nights, trust the joy that always cometh in the morning.