Have you noticed how wise children are? How they seem to come out with some profound truth every once in a while that makes you take a step back and go “wow”? slot pragmatic
I had one of those moments earlier this week. The kids & I were watching television and, noticing the time, I flicked the channels to watch the news. Moans and groans quickly followed… along the lines of, “borrrinnnggg” and “do we have to watch this?”.
However, my eldest (or should I say elder, it seems very appropriate in the circumstances?) of them said that the problem with the news as we see it publicly is almost always bad. Why, meridianshrooms he asked, couldn’t we have a programme just devoted to good news? “I’m sure there’s more of that to talk about” he said.
He’s quite right of course. The news headlines always lead with war, death, destruction, famine and floods. But surely there have to be lots of good things happening in the world? Of course there are and I’m also very sure more people would tune in to watch a programme that was full of things to be happy about.
When all we hear is doom and gloom, it’s no wonder we get down. It’s not surprising that we see the worst in everything when it’s implied that the world is driven by devastation. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but have you noticed how the light-heated news they do report always comes at the end of the bulletin? Why is that? Do they think we’ll somehow forget about all the depressing stuff that went before? Hardly, if eldest son is to be believed “Can’t hang around for that Mum, I’ll be way too depressed by then!”
Maybe we should all start lobbying for “Good News” news programmes, where all they talk about is sunshine, happiness and success? Not to replace the existing news programmes of course- we can’t totally shut off from the reality of the world around us – but as an alternative for those of us who want a bit of a boost?
Then, every evening, depending on how we were feeling, we could have the choice. We could “press the red button now for the alternative news “if it suited us. We could even watch bits of both… and that would probably be the wisest choice. Because isn’t that a more accurate reflection of real life? No, it can’t always be a bundle of laughs, but there’s always something good going on out there; it’s just that sometimes we have to look a little bit harder to find it. And because life is already hard enough, wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to put so much effort into finding something to be happy about?
