For You, When the World is Too Much

BY DREW BROWN

Drew Brown is a writer living in Los Angeles. You can follow him on Twitter @drewbrownwrites or on his website at drewbrownwrites.com.

A sense of overwhelming claustrophobia is hitting me.

I read the news and realize I have no control over the Middle East or the unemployment rate or the melting ice caps. The government is vitriolic and divisive, and social media is its breeding ground—a post on Facebook says the president needs to be impeached as soon as possible; another post says the impeachment is a witch hunt designed to keep the president from succeeding—comments rage beneath each of them. I can’t fix the government. I can’t fix social media. I can’t fix the comment rage.

All I feel I can do is sit and stare at my phone, paralyzed by the incessant reality of a world too big for me.

The Obvious Answer (Or, Platitudes, Shplatitudes)

There’s a common answer to this twenty-first-century angst: “Just love the people closest to you!” 

That feels good at first. I’m comforted by its simplicity: Los Angeles suddenly looks a little nicer, and my minivan suddenly feels a little more fuel-efficient. But then it disappears into the rubble of news updates and sensationalistic tweets without actually affecting any change in my life. It’s like eating a danish while watching Rome burn—just empty calories in the face of chaos.

How am I supposed to “just love people” when the push notifications on my phone keep pulling me into the chaos?

I need something that sticks.

My Man Wendell

Have you ever met someone and decided to commit to them long term within the first few days of knowing them? For most people it’s a significant other; for me, it’s Wendell Berry. Berry is a farmer and writer who celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday this past August, and he has spent almost his entire career practicing subtle cultural resistance from a writing desk at a giant, forty-paned window looking onto his Kentucky farm land.

In one of his most famous essays, “This Little” (written in 1970 but recently republished!), he writes about the justice movements of the Sixties—Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the Environment. He paints a picture of huge world problems—racism, violence, degradation—all while sitting at his desk looking out over his land. What’s a person supposed to do in the face of world-altering epidemics?

He writes, “there is no public crisis that is not also private” and follows that up a few pages later with, “We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities…The citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem.”

This is another way of saying “Just love the people closest to you.” The difference with Wendell, however, is that he doesn’t stop there. He immediately describes three different people:

• “A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors” will begin to understand peace and create peace.

• “A couple who make a good marriage, and raise healthy, morally competent children” are creating a beautiful future, “though they never utter a public word.”

• “A good farmer who is dealing with the problem of soil erosion on an acre of ground” is more competent and compassionate about fixing the problem of pollution than a person only speaking in the abstract.

For Berry, abstract thinking or cheap answers (i.e. “Just love people!”) aren’t going to fix the issues if they aren’t rooted in the concrete reality of our everyday life. In order to remove ourselves from our phone-screen-paralysis, we will need to build creative answers within our own unique contexts.

A Practical and Difficult and Hopeful End

I write to you as a man trying to do this. After growing exhausted from all the big-world problems I couldn’t fix, I decided to “think little” and am beginning to implement (difficult) changes into my schedule:

• First, I read (and am reading) some books on the subject. The one I would encourage everyone to start with (due to its practicality) is Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport (2019). It does a really great job of presenting the issues—centered on technology—and providing practices to gain freedom and distance from tech dependency. Every person will be unique in how they handle technology, but simply adopting new tech blindly is not the answer.

• I bought a record player. At night I put on a record and read a book rather than Netflixing. There’s something about not being able to skip a track or check my phone to see what song is playing that’s really, really freeing. Records also cost money, so I’ve found myself appreciating the act of listening to music so much more.

• I removed all unneeded social media networks, and I went private on the one I have left (Twitter). This has been a hard one for me because, as a writer, I’m supposed to be collecting “followers” (whatever that means). I’ve always chafed at the thought of vying for people to listen to me, so I’ve decided—at least for now—to opt out of the system, and my life is so much better for it.

• I try and avoid reading the news online (where all the headlines are “IN YOUR FACE!”) and instead listen to a podcast on my way to work. I personally enjoy “Up First” from NPR, but there are a number of good ones out there. Another great political news source is called “The Flip Side.” They send you an email every weekday on an item in the news as well as what journalists on the Right and the Left are saying about it.

There are a lot more resources and ideas out there (many of which I’ll be writing about more in-depth soon), and I’d love to hear your ideas and pursuits of living a more intentional life. Leave a comment!