By Angery American
You Can Hear Rumors. But You Cannot Know Them
Rumors are everywhere at the moment. Everything you want to hear you can. You can also hear a lot you do not want to. Bias confirmation is a real thing. So is misinformation and disinformation. In the modern world information moves at the speed of light, literally. Mark Twain once said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” There is no more relevant quote to our current situation, except now it travel all the way around the world!
No matter where you stand on the election, it is important to keep things in perspective. Personally, I am a stoic. I believe in controlling the controllable and accepting those things I cannot influence as they are. And that may sound like defeatism, but it isn’t. It’s actually very healthy. Simply because I accept things for what they are, doesn’t mean I like, support or approve of them. I simply accept them.
This allows me to free my mind. To clear out some of the clutter and shut out the noise. Currently the world is a very noisy place. No matter where you look there’s rumor and inuendo. You can choose to engage these rumors and follow them down the rabbit hole, or you can simply read it and move on. Do not dwell on it. Better yet, don’t even read it!
As the title says, you can hear rumors, but you cannot know them. Right now, everyone has a friend with a friend that knows a guy who heard a dude at the gas station, you get the idea. Everyone is an authority on what is currently happening in our once great nation. Everyone with a YouTube channel is working themselves up like a Baptist preacher on a roll. I would offer this piece of advice, vet your sources.
If you’re following someone for intel you need to know that they know what they are talking about. Are they connected to the intel community or positioned in politics or another sector that would provide them with access to the information they are talking about? While this can be very difficult to do, most people will not reveal their sources as that would compromise the source and therefore make them unavailable in the future. What you need to do is look at what they have said over time and how much of that was correct.
Now, if all you’re looking for is opinion, then by all means listen to any and all sources. Just remember that all you’re doing is confirming your personal bias, right, wrong or indifferent. Opinion is, in my opinion, far more dangerous to your mental health than trying to sort through the static and find the actual signal with real information. It doesn’t help that we can’t rely on the media. We are officially unrepresented in the media market. Yes, I know there are a couple of Conservative leaning organizations out there. The same was thought of Fox News for years and look how that worked out.
Panic is in the air. The world is ending, and Chicken Little is running around like, well, Chicken Little. It’s important, particularly in trying times such as these, to maintain perspective. The future is bleak for millions of Americans at the moment. There’s a lot of fear of what is coming. There are more predictions than you can count at the moment. Worry is a wasted emotion. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is not guaranteed. All you have is today. It’s up to you to choose how you spend it.
Preppers can get hyper focused on what is happening and what they need to do to confront the situation. What they are really bad at is remembering to take a step back from the precipice from time to time and take a deep breath. If you are prepping to your best, doing what you can considering budgets and time, then accept that and take pride in that fact. You’re not being reactive, you’re proactive. You’re taking action now before you need to, so you are not as impacted as the person that doesn’t. Are you where you want to be? Probably not, I’m not. Each step moves you further down the road of the journey of preparedness. Focus on the steps and take them one at a time.
You should also take some time away from it all. This can be as simple as sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee in the morning watching the sunrise. Just leave the phone in the house! Better still would be to take a little vacation. By that I do not mean a weeklong trip to Disney. A simple weekend away can realign your moral. Just remember to ignore the news. Don’t keep checking your phone. Be in the moment with your family and friends. If you’re alone, be in the moment with yourself. I know a lot of people do not like that, being alone with their thoughts, but if you cannot stand being with yourself what makes you think others want to be with you?
Take time to be fully in the moment with your family. We like to play games and try to weekly with the kids. The rules are no phones. Sitting at the table playing dominos for a couple of hours is a relief. I can switch off the world and all I have to worry about is coming up with five! You can laugh and let go. In short, you can live. Build those memories and reinforce the bonds with your family.
In closing remember this. At the height of World War II when Europe had been bombed and shelled to rubble, people still lived there. They woke up every morning and set their minds to the tasks at hand for the day. Was their life the same as before the war? Hell no! Their circumstances had changed and they had to adapt to them and keep putting one foot in front of the other. As much as I hate to use this term, it’s fitting. A new normal developed for these people and they had to learn to navigate it.
People lived through the war. They were in those cities, towns and villages as war raged around them. In most cases neither side did anything for them. Their governments were dealing with a war, the civilians were on their own. If we look at Europe today, there’s still people there. It’s all been rebuilt and the people there live normal and productive lives. Remember, whatever is happening right now is only temporary. It will change. It may be better or may get worse. You will have to decide how to deal with it and move forward. Nothing is permanent. You choose how to react. You cannot control the situation. All you can control is your response. Plan accordingly.